1.
Conservation status
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The conservation status of a group of organisms indicates whether the group still exists and how likely the group is to become extinct in the near future. Various systems of conservation status exist and are in use at international, multi-country, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is the best known worldwide conservation status listing and ranking system. Also included are species that have gone extinct since 500 AD, when discussing the IUCN Red List, the official term threatened is a grouping of three categories, critically endangered, endangered, and vulnerable. Widespread and abundant taxa are included in this category, Data deficient – Not enough data to make an assessment of its risk of extinction Not evaluated – Has not yet been evaluated against the criteria. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora aims to ensure that trade in specimens of wild animals. Many countries require CITES permits when importing plants and animals listed on CITES, in the European Union, the Birds and Habitats Directives are the legal instruments that evaluate the conservation status within the EU of species and habitats. NatureServe conservation status focuses on Latin America, United States, Canada, and it has been developed by scientists from NatureServe, The Nature Conservancy, and the network of natural heritage programs and data centers. It is increasingly integrated with the IUCN Red List system and its categories for species include, presumed extinct, possibly extinct, critically imperiled, imperiled, vulnerable, apparently secure, and secure. The system also allows ambiguous or uncertain ranks including inexact numeric ranks, NatureServe adds a qualifier for captive or cultivated only, which has a similar meaning to the IUCN Red List extinct in the wild status. The Red Data Book of the Russian Federation is used within the Russian Federation, in Australia, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 describes lists of threatened species, ecological communities and threatening processes. The categories resemble those of the 1994 IUCN Red List Categories & Criteria, prior to the EPBC Act, a simpler classification system was used by the Endangered Species Protection Act 1992. Some state and territory governments also have their own systems for conservation status, in Belgium, the Flemish Research Institute for Nature and Forest publishes an online set of more than 150 nature indicators in Dutch. In Canada, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada is a group of experts that assesses and designates which wild species are in danger of disappearing from Canada. Under the Species at Risk Act, it is up to the federal government, in China, the State, provinces and some counties have determined their key protected wildlife species. There is the China red data book, in Finland, a large number of species are protected under the Nature Conservation Act, and through the EU Habitats Directive and EU Birds Directive. In Germany, the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation publishes red lists of endangered species, india has the Wild Life Protection Act,1972, Amended 2003 and the Biological Diversity Act,2002. In Japan, the Ministry of Environment publishes a Threatened Wildlife of Japan Red Data Book, in the Netherlands, the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality publishes a list of threatened species, and conservation is enforced by the Nature Conservation Act 1998. Species are also protected through the Wild Birds and Habitats Directives, in New Zealand, the Department of Conservation publishes the New Zealand Threat Classification System lists
2.
Least Concern
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A least concern species is one which has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as evaluated but not qualified for any other category. As such they do not qualify as threatened, near threatened, species cannot be assigned the Least Concern category unless they have had their population status evaluated. That is, adequate information is needed to make a direct, or indirect, since 2001 the category has had the abbreviation LC, following the IUCN2001 Categories & Criteria. However, around 20% of least concern taxa in the IUCN database use the code LR/lc, prior to 2001 least concern was a subcategory of the Lower Risk category and assigned the code LR/lc or. While least concern is not considered a red listed category by the IUCN, the number of animal species listed in this category totals 14033. There are also 101 animal subspecies listed and 1500 plant taxa, there are also two animal subpopulations listed, the Australasian and Southern African subpopulations of spiny dogfish. No fungi or protista have the classification, though only four species in those kingdoms have been evaluated by the IUCN, humans qualify for this category, and in 2008 were formally assessed as such by the IUCN
3.
IUCN Red List
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The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, founded in 1964, is the worlds most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biological species. The International Union for Conservation of Nature is the main authority on the conservation status of species. A series of Regional Red Lists are produced by countries or organizations, the IUCN Red List is set upon precise criteria to evaluate the extinction risk of thousands of species and subspecies. These criteria are relevant to all species and all regions of the world, the aim is to convey the urgency of conservation issues to the public and policy makers, as well as help the international community to try to reduce species extinction. Major species assessors include BirdLife International, the Institute of Zoology, the World Conservation Monitoring Centre, collectively, assessments by these organizations and groups account for nearly half the species on the Red List. The IUCN aims to have the category of every species re-evaluated every five years if possible, the 1964 IUCN Red List of Threatened Plants used the older pre-criteria Red List assessment system. Plants listed may not, therefore, appear in the current Red List, IUCN advise that is best to check both the online Red List and the 1997 plants Red List publication. The 2006 Red List, released on 4 May 2006 evaluated 40,168 species as a whole, plus an additional 2,160 subspecies, varieties, aquatic stocks, on 12 September 2007, the World Conservation Union released the 2007 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Russ Mittermeier, chief of Swiss-based IUCNs Primate Specialist Group, stated that 16,306 species are endangered with extinction,188 more than in 2006, the Red List includes the Sumatran orangutan in the Critically Endangered category and the Bornean orangutan in the Endangered category. The study shows at least 1,141 of the 5,487 mammals on Earth are known to be threatened with extinction, and 836 are listed as Data Deficient. The Red List of 2012 was released 19 July 2012 at Rio+20 Earth Summit, nearly 2,000 species were added, the IUCN assessed a total of 63,837 species which revealed 19,817 are threatened with extinction. With 3,947 described as endangered and 5,766 as endangered. At threat are 41% of amphibian species, 33% of reef-building corals, 30% of conifers, 25% of mammals, the IUCN Red List has listed 132 species of plants and animals from India as Critically Endangered. Extinct – No known individuals remaining, extinct in the wild – Known only to survive in captivity, or as a naturalized population outside its historic range. Critically endangered – Extremely high risk of extinction in the wild, Endangered – High risk of extinction in the wild. Vulnerable – High risk of endangerment in the wild, near threatened – Likely to become endangered in the near future. Does not qualify for a more at-risk category, widespread and abundant taxa are included in this category. Data deficient – Not enough data to make an assessment of its risk of extinction, Not evaluated – Has not yet been evaluated against the criteria
4.
Taxonomy (biology)
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Taxonomy is the science of defining groups of biological organisms on the basis of shared characteristics and giving names to those groups. The exact definition of taxonomy varies from source to source, but the core of the remains, the conception, naming. There is some disagreement as to whether biological nomenclature is considered a part of taxonomy, the broadest meaning of taxonomy is used here. The word taxonomy was introduced in 1813 by Candolle, in his Théorie élémentaire de la botanique, the term alpha taxonomy is primarily used today to refer to the discipline of finding, describing, and naming taxa, particularly species. In earlier literature, the term had a different meaning, referring to morphological taxonomy, ideals can, it may be said, never be completely realized. They have, however, a value of acting as permanent stimulants. Some of us please ourselves by thinking we are now groping in a beta taxonomy, turrill thus explicitly excludes from alpha taxonomy various areas of study that he includes within taxonomy as a whole, such as ecology, physiology, genetics, and cytology. He further excludes phylogenetic reconstruction from alpha taxonomy, thus, Ernst Mayr in 1968 defined beta taxonomy as the classification of ranks higher than species. This activity is what the term denotes, it is also referred to as beta taxonomy. How species should be defined in a group of organisms gives rise to practical and theoretical problems that are referred to as the species problem. The scientific work of deciding how to define species has been called microtaxonomy, by extension, macrotaxonomy is the study of groups at higher taxonomic ranks, from subgenus and above only, than species. While some descriptions of taxonomic history attempt to date taxonomy to ancient civilizations, earlier works were primarily descriptive, and focused on plants that were useful in agriculture or medicine. There are a number of stages in scientific thinking. Early taxonomy was based on criteria, the so-called artificial systems. Later came systems based on a complete consideration of the characteristics of taxa, referred to as natural systems, such as those of de Jussieu, de Candolle and Bentham. The publication of Charles Darwins Origin of Species led to new ways of thinking about classification based on evolutionary relationships and this was the concept of phyletic systems, from 1883 onwards. This approach was typified by those of Eichler and Engler, the advent of molecular genetics and statistical methodology allowed the creation of the modern era of phylogenetic systems based on cladistics, rather than morphology alone. Taxonomy has been called the worlds oldest profession, and naming and classifying our surroundings has likely been taking place as long as mankind has been able to communicate
5.
Plant
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Plants are mainly multicellular, predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. The term is generally limited to the green plants, which form an unranked clade Viridiplantae. This includes the plants, conifers and other gymnosperms, ferns, clubmosses, hornworts, liverworts, mosses and the green algae. Green plants have cell walls containing cellulose and obtain most of their energy from sunlight via photosynthesis by primary chloroplasts and their chloroplasts contain chlorophylls a and b, which gives them their green color. Some plants are parasitic and have lost the ability to produce amounts of chlorophyll or to photosynthesize. Plants are characterized by sexual reproduction and alternation of generations, although reproduction is also common. There are about 300–315 thousand species of plants, of which the great majority, green plants provide most of the worlds molecular oxygen and are the basis of most of Earths ecologies, especially on land. Plants that produce grains, fruits and vegetables form humankinds basic foodstuffs, Plants play many roles in culture. They are used as ornaments and, until recently and in variety, they have served as the source of most medicines. The scientific study of plants is known as botany, a branch of biology, Plants are one of the two groups into which all living things were traditionally divided, the other is animals. The division goes back at least as far as Aristotle, who distinguished between plants, which generally do not move, and animals, which often are mobile to catch their food. Much later, when Linnaeus created the basis of the system of scientific classification. Since then, it has become clear that the plant kingdom as originally defined included several unrelated groups, however, these organisms are still often considered plants, particularly in popular contexts. When the name Plantae or plant is applied to a group of organisms or taxon. The evolutionary history of plants is not yet settled. Those which have been called plants are in bold, the way in which the groups of green algae are combined and named varies considerably between authors. Algae comprise several different groups of organisms which produce energy through photosynthesis, most conspicuous among the algae are the seaweeds, multicellular algae that may roughly resemble land plants, but are classified among the brown, red and green algae. Each of these groups also includes various microscopic and single-celled organisms
6.
Flowering plant
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The flowering plants, also known as Angiospermae or Magnoliophyta, are the most diverse group of land plants, with 416 families, approx. 13,164 known genera and a total of c.295,383 known species, etymologically, angiosperm means a plant that produces seeds within an enclosure, in other words, a fruiting plant. The term angiosperm comes from the Greek composite word meaning enclosed seeds, the ancestors of flowering plants diverged from gymnosperms in the Triassic Period, during the range 245 to 202 million years ago, and the first flowering plants are known from 160 mya. They diversified extensively during the Lower Cretaceous, became widespread by 120 mya, angiosperms differ from other seed plants in several ways, described in the table. These distinguishing characteristics taken together have made the angiosperms the most diverse and numerous land plants, the amount and complexity of tissue-formation in flowering plants exceeds that of gymnosperms. The vascular bundles of the stem are arranged such that the xylem and phloem form concentric rings, in the dicotyledons, the bundles in the very young stem are arranged in an open ring, separating a central pith from an outer cortex. In each bundle, separating the xylem and phloem, is a layer of meristem or active formative tissue known as cambium, the soft phloem becomes crushed, but the hard wood persists and forms the bulk of the stem and branches of the woody perennial. Among the monocotyledons, the bundles are more numerous in the stem and are scattered through the ground tissue. They contain no cambium and once formed the stem increases in diameter only in exceptional cases, the characteristic feature of angiosperms is the flower. Flowers show remarkable variation in form and elaboration, and provide the most trustworthy external characteristics for establishing relationships among angiosperm species, the function of the flower is to ensure fertilization of the ovule and development of fruit containing seeds. The floral apparatus may arise terminally on a shoot or from the axil of a leaf, occasionally, as in violets, a flower arises singly in the axil of an ordinary foliage-leaf. There are two kinds of cells produced by flowers. Microspores, which divide to become pollen grains, are the male cells and are borne in the stamens. The female cells called megaspores, which divide to become the egg cell, are contained in the ovule. The flower may consist only of parts, as in willow. Usually, other structures are present and serve to protect the sporophylls, the individual members of these surrounding structures are known as sepals and petals. The outer series is usually green and leaf-like, and functions to protect the rest of the flower, the inner series is, in general, white or brightly colored, and is more delicate in structure. It functions to attract insect or bird pollinators, attraction is effected by color, scent, and nectar, which may be secreted in some part of the flower
7.
Eudicots
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The eudicots, Eudicotidae or eudicotyledons are a monophyletic clade of flowering plants that had been called tricolpates or non-magnoliid dicots by previous authors. The close relationships among flowering plants with tricolpate pollen grains was initially seen in studies of shared derived characters. These plants have a trait in their pollen grains of exhibiting three colpi or grooves paralleling the polar axis. Later molecular evidence confirmed the basis for the evolutionary relationships among flowering plants with tricolpate pollen grains. The term means true dicotyledons, as it contains the majority of plants that have been considered dicots and have characteristics of the dicots, the term eudicots has subsequently been widely adopted in botany to refer to one of the two largest clades of angiosperms, monocots being the other. The remaining angiosperms are sometimes referred to as basal angiosperms or paleodicots, the other name for the eudicots is tricolpates, a name which refers to the grooved structure of the pollen. Members of the group have tricolpate pollen, or forms derived from it and these pollens have three or more pores set in furrows called colpi. In contrast, most of the seed plants produce monosulcate pollen. The name tricolpates is preferred by some botanists to avoid confusion with the dicots, numerous familiar plants are eudicots, including many common food plants, trees, and ornamentals. Most leafy trees of midlatitudes also belong to eudicots, with exceptions being magnolias and tulip trees which belong to magnoliids, and Ginkgo biloba. The name eudicots is used in the APG system, of 1998 and it is applied to a clade, a monophyletic group, which includes most of the dicots. The eudicots can be divided into two groups, the basal eudicots and the core eudicots, basal eudicot is an informal name for a paraphyletic group. The core eudicots are a monophyletic group, a 2010 study suggested the core eudicots can be divided into two clades, Gunnerales and a clade called Pentapetalae, comprising all the remaining core eudicots
8.
Rosids
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The rosids are members of a large clade of flowering plants, containing about 70,000 species, more than a quarter of all angiosperms. The clade is divided into 16 to 20 orders, depending upon circumscription and classification and these orders, in turn, together comprise about 140 families. Fossil rosids are known from the Cretaceous period, molecular clock estimates indicate that the rosids originated in the Aptian or Albian stages of the Cretaceous, between 125 and 99.6 million years ago. The name is based upon the name Rosidae, which had usually been understood to be a subclass, in 1967, Armen Takhtajan showed that the correct basis for the name Rosidae is a description of a group of plants published in 1830 by Friedrich Gottlieb Bartling. The clade was later renamed Rosidae and has been variously delimited by different authors, the name rosids is informal and not assumed to have any particular taxonomic rank like the names authorized by the ICBN. The rosids are monophyletic based upon evidence found by molecular phylogenetic analysis, three different definitions of the rosids were used. Some authors included the orders Saxifragales and Vitales in the rosids, others excluded both of these orders. The circumscription used in this article is that of the APG IV classification, which includes Vitales, the rosids and Saxifragales form the superrosids clade. This is one of three groups compose the Pentapetalae, the others being Dilleniales and the superasterids. The rosids consist of two groups, the order Vitales and the eurosids, the eurosids, in turn, are divided into two groups, fabids and malvids. The rosids consist of 17 orders, in addition to Vitales, there are 8 orders in fabids and 8 orders in malvids. Some of the orders have only recently been recognized and these are Vitales, Zygophyllales, Crossosomatales, Picramniales, and Huerteales. The phylogeny of Rosids shown below is adapted from the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group website, the nitrogen-fixing clade contains a high number of actinorhizal plants. Not all plants in this clade are actinorhizal, however, media related to Rosids at Wikimedia Commons
9.
Fagales
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The Fagales are an order of flowering plants, including some of the best-known trees. The order name is derived from genus Fagus, beeches and they belong among the rosid group of dicotyledons. The other families were split into three different orders, placed among the Hamamelidae, the Casuarinales comprised the single family Casuarinaceae, the Juglandales comprised the Juglandaceae and Rhoipteleaceae, and the Myricales comprised the remaining forms. The change is due to studies suggesting the Myricales, so defined, are paraphyletic to the two groups. Modern molecular phylogenetics suggest the following relationships, Missouri Botanical Gardens - Fagales WCSP, World checklist of selected plant families
10.
Fagaceae
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Fagaceae is a family of flowering plants that includes beeches and oaks, and comprises eight genera with about 927 species. Their leaves are lobed and both petioles and stipules are generally present. Leaf characteristics of Fagaceae can be similar to those of Rosaceae. Their fruits lack endosperm and lie in a scaly or spiny husk that may or may not enclose the entire nut, in the oaks, genus Quercus, the fruit is a non-valved nut called an acorn. The husk of the acorn in most oaks only forms a cup in which the nut sits, a characteristic of Fagaceae is their tendency to easily cross-pollinate with members of their same genus/section. In particular, oaks of the same section cross so easily that it is unclear how they manage to stay morphologically distinct, several members of the Fagaceae have important economic uses. Many species of oak, chestnut, and beech are used as timber for floors, furniture, cabinets. Cork for stopping wine bottles and a myriad other uses is made from the bark of cork oak, chestnuts are the fruits from species of the genus Castanea. Numerous species from several genera are prominent ornamentals, and wood chips from the genus Fagus are often used in flavoring beers, the Fagaceae are often divided into five or six subfamilies and are generally accepted to include 8 genera. Monophyly of the Fagaceae is strongly supported by morphological and molecular data. The Southern Hemisphere genus Nothofagus, commonly the southern beeches, was placed in the Fagaceae sister to the genus Fagus. The currently accepted view by systematic botanists is to place Nothofagus in its own family, fagoideae K. Koch Fagus L. —beeches, about 10 to 13 species, north temperate east Asia, southwest Asia, Europe, eastern North America Quercoideae Õrsted Castanea Mill. 1948—golden chinkapins, two species, western United States Lithocarpus Blume 1826—stone oaks, about 330-340 species, warm temperate to tropical Asia Notholithocarpus P. S. Manos, the genus Nothofagus, formerly included in the Fagaceae, is now treated in the separate family Nothofagaceae. The Fagaceae are widely distributed across the Northern Hemisphere, genus-level diversity is concentrated in Southeast Asia, where most of the extant genera are thought to have evolved before migrating to Europe and North America. Members of the Fagaceae are often dominant in northern temperate forests
