Notes And Study Material for Exam Papers

Animal Systematics: The goal of animal systematics is to arrange animals into group, that reflect evolutionary relationship. Monophyletic group: When groups include single ancestral species and all of its descendents such a group is called monophyletic group, in searching out monophyletic groups, taxonomists look for animal attributes called characters that indicate relatedness. Character: A character is virtually anything that has a genetic basis and can be measured from an anatomical feature to a sequence of nitrogenous bases in DNA or RNA. Polyphyletic groups: They have members that can be traced to separate ancestors. Since each group should have single ancestor, a polyphyletic group reflects insufficient knowledge of the group. Paraphyletic group: It includes some, but not all, members of a lineage. Paraphyletic groups result when knowledge of the group is insufficient. Evolutionary Systematics: It is the oldest of three approaches. It is also called tra...

In 1969, Whittaker described a system of classification that distinguished between kingdom according to cellular organization and mode of nutrition. According to this system members of kingdom monera are bacteria and cyanobacteria. They are prokaryotes members of kingdom protista are eukaryotic and consist of single cells or colonies of cells. Members of kingdom plantae are eukaryotic, multi-cellular and photosynthetic. Plants have walled cells and are usually non motile. Members of kingdom fungi are also eukaryotic and multi-cellular. They also have walled cells and are usually non motile. Fungi are decomposers. Members of kingdom animalia are eukaryotic and multi-cellular and they usually feed by ingesting other organisms or parts of other organisms. Their cells lack walls and they are usually motile. For the first two billion years of life on the earth, living forms were prokaryotic microbes. Molecular studies of variations in base sequences of ribosomal RNA from more than ...