Abstract:
This honors thesis examines the history, present applications and the current issues of biological taxonomy, the study of classifying, identifying and naming organisms. The history portion examines the development of taxonomy through the works of many naturalists and biologists. One biologist in particular, Carl Linnaeus, established guidelines and the framework for nomenclature of all organisms. The present applications of taxonomy focus on the developments of taxonomy when it is integrated with evolutionary theory. This integration, named systematics, focuses on determining ancestor-descendent relationships among organisms. The present portion also examines what characteristics a taxonomist might use to determine an organism's classification. Finally the future portion of this thesis focuses on current issues that might affect taxonomy in future years. This includes taxonomy's role in species conservation, DNA taxonomy, taxonomic databases and an alternative system of nomenclature called the PhyloCode.
