Taxonomic Aids

What are Taxonomic Aids?

The world around has billions of plants, animals, and microorganism species. So, it is of utmost importance that these species are placed under separate groups based on their features. This makes it easier to identify them. The groups into which the species are sorted are called taxa. They are given a taxonomic rank for denoting a hierarchy.

Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist, is the founder of modern taxonomy. In ascending order, the ranks of the kingdom are species, genus, family, order, class, and phylum. Collecting samples from various organisms or the entire organism can be preserved under the right conditions to help with research on living beings by identifying the taxonomic aids, known as taxonomical aids. 

Types of Taxonomic Aids

Some taxonomical aids are discussed below:

Herbarium

A herbarium is designed as a group of preserved plant specimens with the plants’ details. Herbarium had been recorded for the first time in 1532 when Luca Ghini, the botanist, introduced this method. 

The specimen collected and stored will be the whole plant or a part of the plant, such as flowers, leaves, etc. To make sure that the specimen can be stored for a long time, a proper method has to be followed. 

Generally, the plant or its part is cleaned and dried before mounting on a paper sheet. The process is known as exsiccate. Other methods are also used to create herbarium based on the specimen being preserved. Once created, samples are collected and preserved in alcohol and other chemicals at times. 

The herbarium sheet has to contain information:

• Vernacular names
• Date of collection
• Family
• Scientific name
• Habitat
• Collector’s name
• Description

Herbarium offers a reference to taxonomic studies. So, the institutes that deal with botanical studies have herbaria. 

Botanical Gardens

Botanical gardens are gardens where certain plants are grown. The plants are labelled as per their taxonomy. It can be defined as a garden to create samples collect, cultivate, preserve, and show different plant species with botanical details. The garden is dedicated to a collection, such as cacti, marine plants, medicinal plants, and alpine plants.

Research institutes, universities, and governmental organizations generally run botanical gardens. In most of the gardens, visitors can view the collection and get access to the information. Unlike the previous taxa, the plants present in the botanical garden are kept alive to help study plants. At times, shade houses and greenhouses are also related to the gardens to offer the plant’s optimum environmental conditioning, which is vital for its growth.

In a Botanical Garden, you will find all plants with identification plates containing the botanical name, common name, and family. There are more than 500 botanical gardens in the world.

Zoological Parks

A zoological park is defined as a facility where live animals are kept in an enclosure or area under the right conditions. These parks are open to visitors. 

The oldest zoological garden originated in 3500 BCE in Egypt. Several emperors and kings have also housed animal facilities in their kingdoms. Recently, many zoos have been transformed into conservation parks that focus on keeping animals in their actual habitats rather than being kept in enclosures or cages. Some zoological parks have in-house water bodies, birdhouses, nocturnal facilities, and temperature-sensitive enclosures. 

Museum

You will come across biological museums are found in colleges and schools, such as the biology laboratory. It is a facility conserving specimens and artefacts of cultural, scientific, artistic, and archaeological significance. The exhibits in the museum are used for research and public display. 

Some museums are dedicated to natural, historical houses with various life-sized animal models, various fossils, plant specimens, fungi, and geological samples. In taxonomic studies, they serve as an aid. However, they also help with evolutionary studies and geological or paleontological research. The museums keep the collections with utmost care under the proper storage conditions with optimum security. 

Keys

Keys help with the taxonomy study by helping with the identification process of animals, plants, and other beings depending on their characteristics. They are classified based on similarities and dissimilarities. There are mainly two types of keys: poly clave keys and dichotomous keys. Dichotomous Keys allow two different couplets. You will find two different kinds of Dichotomous Keys, Bracketed Keys and Yoked Keys or Indented Keys. Poly Clave Keys is a new alternative to the previous keys. It has become highly popular, mainly because it is easy to computerize them. Poly Clave Key terms are synoptic or multiple access keys. The key depends on species identification through elimination. 

The keys depend on contrasting characters, usually in a pair known as a couplet. Every statement present in the key is called the lead. Keys are computer-based devices or printed for identifying organisms. The user has to answer questions associated with the characters or features of the biological entity. They are traditionally designated as a single-access with sequential steps for identification, and every step has two or more alternatives and depends on the selected steps. This determines the next step. If a step has two alternatives, it is known as a dichotomous key, but if it has more than two, it is polytomous. 

But, in present times, multi-access keys have been introduced where the users are given a choice to select steps to identify organisms and the order of the steps. 

Conclusion 

Taxonomic aids help in storing and preserving information and specimens. It is essential to collect real specimens of plant and animal species. Taxonomic aids are essential for training in systematics that is used to classify organisms. It facilitates identifying, classifying, and naming organisms using the collected specimens from the fields and then preserved as referrals.