NOMENCLATURE
Suminder Kaur, Academic Content Writer at Edumarz
Multiple local names makes it difficult for us to identify the organisms globally so a biological system is needed for naming of the organisms. Therefore, Nomenclature is a biological system for naming the organisms.
Nomenclature is a protocol through which each and every organism would have one scientific name which would be used by everyone to identify the organism.
Binomial Nomenclature.
Carl Linnaeus introduced the system of nomenclature.
In the method of Binomial nomenclature, each species is given a name consisting of two words.
Every living organism (plants or animals) would have their own scientific names.
For example, Name of humans is Homo sapiens, Name of mango is Mangifera indica.
Rules for Binomial Nomenclature
All biologists over the world agreed upon one two international codes for the naming protocol.
International code of botanical nomenclature (ICBN) : It deals with the biological nomenclature of plants.
International code for Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) : It deals with the biological nomenclature of animals.
The role of these codes is to make sure that each organism gets a specific name and that name is globally recognised.
All the scientific names of the organisms are Latin. Hence, always written in italics.
The naming follows certain norms. Each name has two parts.
Generic name – it is the name of the genus.
Specific epithet – it is the name of the species.
Genus name is written in capital letters and species name is written in small letters.
When hand-written these names should be underlined and italicized if typed.
For example, the Panthera tigris is the scientific name of tiger. ‘Panthera’ represent genus and ‘tigris’ represent the species
Significance of Binomial Nomenclature
It helps in easy identification of an organism all over the world.
It helps in keeping a track of the number of species.