Biodiversity, evolution & taxonomy - Teaching Biodiversity Short Course for FET Life Sciences Teachers

My slides for my lecture on biodiversity, evolution and taxonomy for a short course for high school biology teachers, organised by the University of Cape Town's Schools Development Unit. This presentation was created using "rmarkdown", an open source R-package for document preparation, using the beamer presentation output option.

Transcript

1. Ruan van Mazijk Teaching Biodiversity for FET Life Sciences MSc candidate Dept. Biological Sciences, UCT Biodiversity, evolution & taxonomy Chironia sp., Bobejaanskloof, 2018-05-24, CC BY 4.0 Ruan van Mazijk
2. Ernst Haeckel’s Tree of Life
3. The Tree of Life – Discovering all its branches – Understanding how those branches link together
4. Why study life’s diversity? – For its own sake – For the benefit of society – For medicines, materials & food
5. Taxonomy The science of classifying & naming organisms – Foundation of all other life sciences – Can’t do much without knowing what something is…
6. Old-timey taxonomy: Linnaeus Carl von Linné
7. Old-timey taxonomy: Linnaeus cont. – Pre-evolutionary – Classification based on sexual parts for plants (௡) – A lot of Linnaeus’ Systema Naturae & Systema Plantarum didn’t hold up to modern scientific evidence…
8. But, he gave us 2x amazing (& simple!) things: – Hierarchical classification – Binomial nomenclature
9. Naming things: Nomenclature – A unique name for every species – Common-names led to confusion…
10. One of many plant species Linnaeus re-named
11. Plantago foliis ovato-lanceolatus pubescentibus, spica cylindrica, scapo tereti (= “plantain with pubescent ovate-lanceolate leaves, a cylindrical spike and a terete scape”)
12. Plantago foliis ovato-lanceolatus pubescentibus, spica cylindrica, scapo tereti (= “plantain with pubescent ovate-lanceolate leaves, a cylindrical spike and a terete scape”) ݂ Plantago media
13. A mallard
14. Classifying things: Hierarchies
15. The domains The 2x prokaryotic & 1x eukaryotic domains of the Tree of Life
16. Proakryotes (simple life) The bacteria species E. coli
17. Proakryotes (simple life) cont. An extremophilic archaean
18. Eukaryotes (having a “true cell nucleus”) The Kingdoms1 of eukaryotic life 1Protists are mostly algal micro-organisms that are neither plants, fungi nor animals
19. Kingdom Protista Protists are the “dust-bin” kingdom
20. Kingdom Fungi Half animal, half plant
21. Kingdom Animalia Animals both big & small
22. Animal phyla A range of body-plans among animals More-or-less increasing complexity – Porifera – Cnidaria – Platyhelminthes – Annelida – Mollusca – Nematoda – Arthropoda – Echinodermata
23. Phylum Porifera – Sea-sponges – Colonial vs true organism?
24. Phylum Cnidaria Unique stinging cells “cnidocytes”!
25. A coral reef…
26. … made by coral polyps
27. Phylum Platyhelminthes – Flatworms – Some parasitic A marine flatworm
28. Phylum Annelida – Worms II: the Sequel – Segmented-worms An earthworm
29. Phylum Mollusca – All have a “mantel”, often in a shell – Some of the most intelligent invertabrates!
30. Phylum Nematoda – Worms III: the Revenge – Roundwords – Found everywhere – Taxonomically challenging… They all look kind of like this
31. Phylum Arthropoda – “Jointed legs” – Incredibly diverse
32. Phylum Echinodermata – Sea-stars & sea-cucumbers – Five-way symmetry
33. Phylum Chordata Vertebrates!
35. Kingdom Plantae The green foundation of life on land
36. Major plant groups
37. Over to Dunja… Thank you!