DIVERSITY in living organisms. What is Nomenclature?

DIVERSITY

The word Diversity can be clearly understood by looking around this vast world of living organisms live and proliferate at various condition. If we look around, then we will be able to see a vast variety of living organisms such as the plants, animals, microbes, and various other organisms. These organisms differ from each other is a number of physiological and metabolic characteristics. Because of this characteristic difference we are able to distinguish each and every organisms from the others. Therefore the processes by which we are able to differ the organism can be stated as DIVERSITY.

After the process of diversification, the process which comes in main need is the process of naming each and every organisms, which will be small and be a standard name that can be used all over the world. So, a process of naming the organisms was developed and named as "NOMENCLATURE". By this process it would be easier to classify each and every organism.

Next comes the process of identifying a particular organism so that it could be named in a correct way based on its characteristics. This process is called " Identification".

For plants, scientific names are based on agreed principles and criteria, which are being provided by the " INTERNATIONAL CODE FOR BOTANICAL NOMENCLATURE(ICBN)". For animals it was by the "INTERNATIONAL CODE FOR ZOOLOGICAL NOMENCLATURE(ICZN)".

Biologists follow the universally accepted process for naming a organism. Each name was divided into two components- The GENERIC NAME and The SPECIFIC EPITHET. This process of naming is called as "BINOMIAL NOMENCLATURE". This naming system was given by "CAROLUS LINNAEUS".

For example: - Panthera tigris (Scientific name of TIGER).

The universal rules for writing the scientific names are as below: -

1. Biological names are generally in latin and written in italics. They are Latinised or derived from latin irrespective of their origin.
2. The first word in a biological name represents the genus while the second component denotes the specific epithet.
3. Both the word in a biological name, when hand written, are separately understood, or printed in italics to indicate their latin origin.
4. The first word denoting the genus starts with a capital letter while the specific epithet starts with a small letter. It can be illustrated with the example of Mangifera indica. 
5. Name of the author is written 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 the specific epithet was first described by Linnaeus.