Although this blog primarily focuses on microbiology, we are currently discussing taxonomy and systematics in class, so this blog post is related to that topic - but in the Plant Kingdom.
Many of the previously recognized plant species were described in times prior to the use of current molecular genetic tools for constructing accurate phylogenies and before the widespread availability of information technologies for maintaining an accurate list of plant species. Consequently, many plants were described more than once and given multiple distinct species names.
Efforts are now underway to create an accurate and complete inventory of all of the world's plants. To date, there have been 600,000 previously recognized plant species stricken from the list due to redundancies. It is estimated that the final list will contain only about 400,000 plant species in total.
This article illustrates some of the issues that we discusses in class - difficulties and inaccuracies related to the old system of taxonomy, and it also highlights the improvements made with modern systematics.
An accurate inventory of plant species is thought to be essential for conservation efforts.
No comments:
Post a Comment