question_answer 43)

  Define a taxon. What is meant by taxonomic hierarchy? Give a flow diagram from the lowest to highest category for a plant and an animal. What happens to the number of individuals and numbers of sharedcharacters as we go up the taxonomical hierarchy? As we move up in the taxonomic hierarchy the number of shared characters become less.

Answer:

                  Taxon is a scientific term used for different categories of classification. Taxonomic hierarchy is position of different taxonomic categories is ascending order,which describes the complete systematic position of any living organism. Given below is the flow diagram of taxonomic hierarchy

Taxon	Plant	Animal
Kingdom
This is the highest category of classification, which includes all organism that share a set of distinguishing common characters.	Kingdom-Plantage	e.g., kingdom-Animalia.
Phylum/Division
A It includes different classes having a few common characters.	Division is used in plants.	Phylum is used in animals e.g. Chordata includes classes like Pisces, Amphibia, Pisces, Amphibia, Reptilia, Aves and Mammalia,
Class
Represents organisms of related orders.	Found only in flowering plants, i.e., monocotyledoneae and dicotyledoneae.	Comprised of related orders i.e., class- Mammalia
Order
It is an assemblage of families resembling one another in few characters. These characters are less similar as compared to characters of many genera placed in a family.	e.g., dicotyledoneae consists of order Rosales polemoniales, sapindales, ranales etc. on the basis of floral characters.	e.g., class-Mammalia includes order chiroptera, marsupialia, rodentia, cetacean, carnivore.
Family
It includes one or more genera differentiated from others related families by certain characteristic differences (both vegetative and reproductive).	e.g., Order Polemoniales comprises families like Solanaceae and Convolvulaceae	e.g., order carnivore include families like Felidae (cats), canidae (dogs, foxes), ursidae (bears) etc.
Taxon	Plant	Animal
Genus
It is the first higher category above the species level. It is a group of species, which are related and have fever characters in common as compared to species.	e.g., Family-Solanaceae comprises of genus Solanum.	e.g., hlidae comprises of genus Panthera (lion, tiger) and Felis (cats)
Species
It is group of individuals with similar morphological characters, which are able to interbreed and produce individuals of their own kind.	e.g., Solanum nigrum (brinjal) and Solanum tuberosum. Here nigrum and tuberosum are two species of Solanum genus.	e.g., The genus Panthera includes species Leo (lion) and Panthera Tigris (tiger).

As we move up in the taxonomic  hierarchy  the number of shared characters become less.