Now we are going to discuss a special method to differentiate different organisms giving them a scientific name which gives basic idea about the organism and the system is known as binomial nomenclature.
What is Binomial Nomenclature:
An organism can have several regional names but the local name is only famous for the local people for example the local name of potato is only known to the people of the region but it is mostly unknown to the people of other areas.
So it creates confusion for different local names of specific organisms so we should consider a naming system which is globally recognised so that anyone can understand the organism by its name.
Carl Linnaeus was the scientist who proposed a special system of nomenclature for the organism which will give a scientific name to the organism so that the name can represent its position in all organisms in a scientific way.
This nomenclature is called binomial because it has two parts, one is for the identity of genus while another part represents the species so from the binomial name we can understand what should be its features and it will not create any confusions.
For example, the binomial name of tiger is Panthera tigris which is recognised globally but it has many local names which is impossible to know for a person because there are many local names and all are not well documented so it is not a scientific way.
Rules of Binomial Nomenclature:
When an organism is given a binomial name then scientists give the name according to some code which is globally recognised so that naming occurs in a uniform way all over the world.
There are two codes for binomial nomenclature international code for botanical nomenclature or ICBN which gives the code for binomial nomenclature of plants and another one is internationally code of zoological nomenclature or ICZN which gives the guide for nomenclature of animals and there are some rules for binomial nomenclature which we will discuss below.
Scientific name of any organism is given in Latin language because Latin language is not an evolving language so it is useful for scientific nomenclature, the scientific names are printed in italics but when they are written in hand they are underlined.
Scientific names have two parts one is genus name another one is specific names and both give us an idea about the basic characteristics of the organism and when they printed or handwritten the first letter of the genus name is in capital while the first letter of specific names is in small letters.
Importance of Binomial Nomenclature:
- Main importance of binomial nomenclature is that it is able to remove the confusion which was created when an organism had different local names and there was no uniform name for an organism.
- But after the proposal of binomial nomenclature it becomes very easy to give a uniform name which can be recognised globally and we can study an organism from any corner of the world by knowing its by uniform scientific names.
- Binomial nomenclature not only gives an organism a uniform name but it is also useful for giving description about the organism because it contains genus and species names which gives us an basic idea about the general features of the organism.
- Sometimes it occurs that an organism is given two names by using the principles of binomial nomenclature then the name which was given according to the proper guidance of binomial nomenclature first is accepted.
- There are some names of organisms which were given before the publishing of “Systema Naturae” are also considered as invalid names so these are some points which are very important to notice in binomial nomenclature.
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