As human beings,
we all love and appreciate nature one way or another.
Peculiar shapes, attractive colors, and curious daily
activities of many life forms occurring around us, plants
and animals alike, greatly stir our curiosity and
interest. We have learned to know many of these life
forms through observation and experience. In order to be
able to recognize these living organisms again and again,
we have to apprehend and record characteristics of their
appearance, habits and various other aspects, and give
each a unique name. In fact, everyone of us, in this
context, is a "biosystematist".
What is
Biosystematics?
Biosystematics
is the science through which life forms are discovered,
identified, described, named, classified and catalogued,
with their diversity, life histories, living habits,
functions and roles in an ecosystem, and spatial and
geographical distributions recorded. In essence, it is
biosystematics, the science that provides indispensable
information to support many fields of research and
beneficial applied programs (see chart beside).
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The center of this chart depicts biosystematics
whose function is to generate fundamental
knowledge of living things on which other fields
of biological research and applied programs (surrounding
circles) depend |
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