Taxonomy

Biological taxonomy is a branch of scientific research concerned with grouping, classifying, and naming different species of organisms. Somewhat ironically, there are different types and schools of taxonomy. Listed below are a few examples:

• Phenetics (or 'taximetrics'); seeks to relate species by overall appearance or morphology and takes a numerical approach to build relational information.

• Cladistics relates organisms by shared and lost ancestral traits

• Phylogenetics takes a genetic approach to identifying ancestral relationships based on shared gene code, polymorphisms, and gene products.