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DIVERSITY IN THE LIVING WORLD, ,  The number and types of organisms present on earth is called Biodiversity.,  The number of species that are known and described range between 1.7-1.8 million., Q) Why living organisms classified ?,  it is nearly impossible to study all the living organisms, it is necessary to devise, some means to make this possible. This process is classification.,  Classification is the process by which anything is grouped into convenient, categories based on some easily observable characters., Q) Why the names of living organism should be standardized?,  There are millions of plants and animals in the world; we know the plants and, animals in our own area by their local names.,  These local names would vary from place to place, even within a country, hence,, there is a need to standardize the naming of living organisms such that a particular, organism is known by the same name all over the world. This process is called, nomenclature.,  The scientific names ensure that each organism has only one name.,  For plants, scientific names are based on agreed principles and criteria, which are, provided in International Code for Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN).,  Animal taxonomists have evolved International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, (ICZN)., BINOMIAL NOMENCLATURE, , , , Biologists follow universally accepted principles to provide scientific names to, known organisms.,  Each name has two components – the Generic name (Genus name) and the specific, epithet(Species name) .,  This system of providing a name with two components is called Binomial, nomenclature,  This naming system given by Carolus Linnaeus

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Universal rules of nomenclature,  Biological names are generally in Latin and written in italics.,  The first word in a biological name represents the genus while the second, component denotes the specific epithet.,  Both the words in a biological name, when handwritten, are separately underlined,, or printed in italics to indicate their Latin origin.,  The first word denoting the genus starts with a capital letter while the specific, epithet (species name) starts with a small letter.,  There is a gap (space) between the genus name and species name.,  Name of the author appears after the specific epithet, i.e., at the end of the, biological name and is written in an abbreviated form, e.g., Mangifera indica Linn., It indicates that this species was first described by Linnaeus