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Announcements:
Welcome to IB 335! Be sure to complete the Student Information sheet and hand it in before you leave lecture today. This information is being solicited to help us get to know you better and to assist us in contacting you, if ever necessary.
Purchase the coursepak "Systematics of Plants, Class Notes & Laboratory Exercises" at TIS Bookstore, as well as the required textbook "Plant Systematics, A Phylogenetic Approach Third Edition."
Prof. Downie is currently studying at the University of Texas, Austin. He will be returning to class on Monday, January 26th.
General objectives:
After studying this material you should be able to:
Text readings:
Plant Systematics, A Phylogenetic Approach by Judd et al. (Third Edition), Chapter 1, The Science of Plant Systematics. Only read relevant sections, such as "What do we mean by systematics?," "The practice of plant systematics," and "Why is systematics important?"
[Note: Be aware that you are responsible for material contained in these required readings. In order to address some of the objectives above, you will need to read the text.]
Introduction:
“A traveller should be a botanist, for in all views plants form the chief embellishment. Group masses of naked rock, even in the wildest forms, may for a while afford a sublime spectacle, but they will soon grow monotonous. Paint them with bright and varied colors and they become fantastic, clothe them with vegetation and they must form a decent, if not beautiful, picture.” — Charles Darwin
[Maps: World, United States, North America]
“Botany I rank with the most valuable sciences, whether we consider its subjects as furnishing the principal subsistence of life to man and beast, delicious varieties for our tables, refreshments from our orchards, the adornments of our flower borders, shade and perfume of our groves, materials for our building, or medicaments for our bodies.” — Thomas Jefferson
In this course, we spend a lot of time looking closely at plants — especially flowers. [poppy] - [sunflower]
“A flower is relatively small. Everyone has many associations with a flower, the idea of flowers. You put out your hand to touch the flower, lean forward to smell it, maybe touch it with your lips almost without thinking, or give it to someone to please them. Still, in a way, nobody sees a flower, really, it is so small. We haven’t the time – and to see takes time like to have a friend takes time. If I could paint the flower exactly as I see it no one would see what I see because I would paint it small like the flower is small. So I said to myself – I’ll paint what I see – what the flower is to me but I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it.” — Georgia O’Keeffe, About Myself, 1939.
“When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.” — Georgia O’Keeffe, New York Post, May 16, 1946.
This course has one central theme — the diversity of flowering plants and how this diversity is used to classify plants in a way that reflects their evolutionary history.
In IB335, you will be dissecting many flowers in the labs! [Digital Flowers]
Definitions of Taxonomy and Systematics:
Taxonomy is the science of classification, especially the classification of biological organisms. The term is derived from the Greek taxis (arrangement) and nomos (law).
Taxonomy is universal, not restricted to plants or even living organisms.
“Taxonomy may be defined as the study and description of the variation of organisms, the investigation of the causes and consequences of this variation, and the manipulation of the data to produce a system of classification” [ along with a methodology to name the units of classification.] — C. Stace
“Taxonomy” and “systematics” are largely synonymous, but “systematics” implies the study of evolutionary relationships.
"The fundamental aim of systematics is to discover all the branches of the evolutionary tree of life, to document changes that have occurred during the evolution of these branches, and to the greatest extent possible describe all species--the tips of the branches. Systematics is therefore the study of biological diversity that exists on Earth today and its evolutionary history." (Judd et al., 2008, pp. 2-3).
Taxonomy is at the same time the most basic and the most derived or synthetic field of biology. It is basic because a system of naming and classifying organisms is needed in order to communicate knowledge about them to others, and hence every field of biology uses the results of taxonomy. It is also the most derived field because it has no data of its own, but uses those from every other discipline, thus progressing with advances in accumulated knowledge and technology.
Units of IB335:
Terminology. Brassicaceae (Mustard Family), as an example of terminology used to describe plant structures.
Selected Plant Families. Digital Flowers
A major part of this course is learning the features of a selected number of plant families. There are 400-450 families of flowering plants, and in this class we will cover 36 of the most common, widespread, and important families.
Flowering plants [or angiosperms] dominate most of Earth's terrestrial ecosystems and are of enormous benefit to humans, providing us with food, fiber (for paper and clothing), fuel, fabrication (construction materials), flowers, forests, fancification (beautiful ornamentals), fragrance, fharmaceuticals (okay, pharmaceuticals), and fermentation.
Principles of Systematics (and other topics).
Some of the topics to be covered this term include the methods and principles of systematics, nomenclature, classification, phylogeny estimation, tallgrass prairies, molecular systematics, breeding systems, preserving and collecting plants, pollination biology, dispersal mechanisms, historical systematics, and the origin of angiosperms.
Enjoy the course!
We sincerely hope that you will enjoy the course this semester. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us whenever the need arises.
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