130 Evolution and the Fossil Record
destroying habitat and wiping out the species on earth, but without enough systematists to
identify and describe these species, we have no idea how bad the problem is. Many ecolo-
gists who are working on this problem complain that there are no longer enough trained
systematists to even begin to identify all the species in danger—yet the funding agencies
continue to starve systematics, and most students stay away from it because there isn’t as
much glamour or money. Likewise, the systematist is necessary for many other functions,
like correctly identifying which pest species is causing problems or describing and naming
new species that may someday hold the cure for a deadly disease.
What Is Taxonomy?
God created, but Linnaeus classified.
Carolus LinnaeusThere are many ways to classify things. We do it all the time. We quickly identify cars on
the road as “sedans,” “SUVs,” “minivans,” “pickups,” and the like, but our kids might just
identify them as “red cars” and “silver cars” and so on. A car buff or police officer might
be able to recognize the make and model of each car as it flashes by. Similarly, small librar-
ies use the Dewey decimal system to classify their books by topics, but larger libraries use
an entirely different system developed by the Library of Congress; the categories in each
are entirely different. Both of these systems try to be as “natural” as possible, clustering
books that belong in the same category, such as “Science” with subcategories like “Geology,”
“Biology,” “Physics,” and “Chemistry.”
In nature, there are also many ways to classify things. Many native cultures use simple
rules like “good to eat” versus “eat only in emergency” versus “inedible” versus “poison-
ous.” Even our own culture uses simple ecological properties to crudely classify things. For
example, some people call nearly all marine life “fish,” including “shellfish” (which are mol-
lusks), “starfish” (which are echinoderms), and “jellyfish” (which are cnidarians related to
corals and sea anemones). In the 1600s and early 1700s, a number of different naturalists had
proposed classification schemes for life, but they were arbitrary and highly unnatural. For
example, they often lumped together everything with wings, including birds, insects, and
flying fish, or things with shells, like armadillos, turtles, and mollusks. The eventual solution
was developed by the Swedish botanist Carl von Linné, better known by his Latinized name,
Carolus Linnaeus. From his experiences with plants, Linnaeus realized that the best clas-
sification was based on reproductive structures, primarily flowers, rather than in the con-
fusingly similar leaves or trunks or roots. This “sexual system” for plant classification was
published in 1752 and became the basis for modern plant taxonomy. Linnaeus also applied
the same idea to animals, focusing on fundamental properties like the reproductive system
and hair or feathers, rather than on superficial ones like flight or armor. His first classifica-
tion, entitled Systema Naturae (The System of Nature) was published in 1735, and the tenth
edition of 1758 is regarded as the starting point of modern taxonomy.
Although the original Linnaean classification became outdated as hundreds of new spe-
cies were described, his basic principles are still used around the world. Every species on
earth has a two-part name (binomen), consisting of the genus name (always capitalized and
either underlined or italicized) and the trivial name (never capitalized, but also always either