New Horizons in Insect Science Towards Sustainable Pest Management

3

Insect Taxonomy—Basics to

Barcoding

K. Sreedevi, Naresh Meshram and P. R. Shashank

A. K. Chakravarthy (ed.), New Horizons in Insect Science: Towards Sustainable Pest Management,
DOI 10.1007/978-81-322-2089-3_1, © Springer India 2015

K. Sreedevi () · N. Meshram · P. R. Shashank
Division of Entomology, Indian Agricultural Research
Institute, New Delhi 110012, India
e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

The integration of new knowledge and methods of population biology,

phylogenetics, and other evolutionary disciplines into taxonomy is war-

ranted (Sites and Marshall, Trends Ecol Evol 18:462–470, 2004). The

analysis and interpretation of data used to delimit species have profound

implications in taxonomic research. Integrative taxonomy gives priority

to species delineation over the creation of new species names. The inte-

gration of all possible taxonomic approaches abridging the gaps of each

in arriving at correct species delimitation is the need of the hour in the

light of biodiversity inventory. Taxonomy needs to be pluralistic to im-

prove species discovery and description, and to develop novel protocols to

produce the much-needed inventory of life in a reasonable time. Insects,

being vast and diverse on earth , need much more integrative taxonomic

attention than other life systems. The unique characters of an organism

that unravels the diagnostic character differences that delimit the species

have to be assessed holistically.

Introduction

Insects, ever since their appearance 350 million
years ago, are the dominant species in the biot-
ic community widespread in all habitats of the
earth. The various studies of insects prevail from

ages to the modern era. However, the taxonomic

studies originated in the eighteenth century with

Carolous Linneaus work on Systema Naturae,

first published in 1735. Aristotle was the first to

recognize the hierarchical pattern in the diversity

of animals but the scientific method of classifica-

tion was put forth by Linneaus followed by work-

ers like Latreille, Fabricius, etc. This paved way

for the emergence of taxonomy and with Charles

Darwin’s theory of natural selection, systematics

gained the momentum.

Keywords

Evolutionary disciplines · Holistic approach · Population biology ·

Phylogenetics