Understanding the taxonomic skill of non-science major students: How the students would name and classify plants?
Paper Details
Understanding the taxonomic skill of non-science major students: How the students would name and classify plants?
Abstract
The study is a follow up to the research conducted to the non science major college students in the University of Hawaii. The activity was performed with students from Putho Tuntungin High School, Los Bańos, College, Laguna, Philippines with limited background in taxonomy. The students were given a task to name and classify selected plant samples with complete autonomy. There were 33 plant samples collected from the vicinity of the University of the Philippines, Los Bańos. The whole exercise including the giving of instructions lasted for about 30 minutes. The results indicated that the term types used in the naming (27 types) and categorizing (15 types) plant samples were highly variable. The names and adjectives were the frequent term types used by the students. The monomials were preferred over the binomials indicating convenience and less exposure to binomial nomenclature in taxonomy. The name types were sourced from names of common people and entertainers for both naming and categorizing plants. The adjective types were rather variable used in both naming and categorizing plant samples. The flower was the frequent plant part used by the students in the activity. The combination of noun-adjective was largely employed in the naming of plant samples. The adjective was rather preferred in categorizing plant samples. Lastly, monomial nouns were highly preferred both in the naming and categorizing plant samples.
Agnarsson I, Kuntner M. 2007. Taxonomy in a changing world: seeking solutions for a science in crisis. Systematic Biology 56, 531–539.
Basset Y, Novotny V, Miller SE, Weiblen GD, Missa O, Stewart AJA. 2004. Conservation and biological monitoring of tropical forests: the role of parataxonomists. Journal of Applied Ecology 41, 163-174.
Berlin B. 1992.Ethnobiological classification: principles of categorization of plants and animals in traditional societies. Princeton University Press, New Jersey.
Berlin B. 1990. The chicken and the egg revisited:further evidence for the intellectualist bases for intellectual classification. In: Posey DA and Overal WL Ed.Proceedings of the First Congress of Ethnobiology: Museo de Paraense Emilio Guelde, Belem, Brasil 1, 19-33.
Carvalho MR, Bockmann FA, Amorim DS, Brandao CR. 2008.Systematics must embrace comparative biology and evolution, not speed and automation. Evolutionary Biology 35, 150-157.
Carvalho MR, Bockmann FA, Amorim DS, Brandao CRF, de Vivo M, de Figueiredo JL, Britski HA, de Pinna MCC, Menezes NA, Marques PL, Papavero N, Cancello EM, Crisci JV, Mc Eachran JD, Schelly RC, Lundberg JG, Gill AC, Britz R, Wheeler QD, Stiassny MLJ, Parenti LR, Page LM, Wheeler WC, Faivovich J, Vari RP, Grande L, Humphries CJ, DeSalle R, Ebach MC, Nelson GJ. 2007. Taxonomic impediment orimpediment to taxonomy? a commentary on systematics and the cyber taxonomic paradigm. Evolutionary Biology 34, 140-143.
Godfray HJC. 2002. Challenges for taxonomy: the discipline will have to reinvent itself if it is to survive and flourish. Nature 417, 17–19.
Godfray HCJ. 2005. Taxonomy as information science. Proceedings of the Californian Academyof Science 56, 170–181.
Han Lau Y, Mc Clatchey WC, Reedy D, Chock AK, Bridges KW, Ritchey Z. 2009. Are our students taxonomically challenged or not? Ethnobotany Research and Applications 7, 029-037.
Knapp S, Lamas G, Lughadha EN, Novarino G. 2004. Stability or stasis in the names of organisms: the evolving codes of nomenclature. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 359, 611-622.
Lahe-Deklin F, Si A. 2014. Ex-situ documentation of ethnobiology. Language, Documentation and Conservation 8, 788–809.
Lampman AM. 2010. How folk classification interacts with ethnoecologicalknowledge: A case study from Chiapas, Mexico. Journal of Ecological Anthropology 14, 39-51.
Lord T, Baviskar S. 2007. Moving students from information recitation to information understanding: exploiting Bloom’s Taxonomy in creating science questions. Journal of College Science Teaching 36, 40–44.
May RM. 2011. Why worry about how manyspecies and their loss? PLoS Biology 9(8), 1-2,e1001130. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001130.
Pysek P, Hulme PE, Meyerson LA, Smith GF, Boatwright JS, Crouch NR, Figueiredo E, Foxcroft LC, Jarosık V, Richardson DM, Suda J, Wilson JRU. 2013. Hitting the right target: taxonomic challenges for, and of, plant invasions. AoB PLANTS 5, plt042; http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aobpla/plt042.
Rodman JE, Cody JH. 2003. The taxonomic impediment overcome: NSF’s Partnerships for Enhancing Expertise in Taxonomy (PEET) as a model. Syst. Biol. 52, 428-435.
Rouhan G, Gaudeul M. 2014. Plant taxonomy: a historical perspective, current challenges, and perspectives. Methods Molecular Biology 1115, 1-37.
Smith RD, Aradottir GI, Taylor A, Lyal C. 2008. Invasive species management: what taxonomic support is needed? Global Invasive Species Programme, Nairobi, Kenya:
Stevens, PF. 2002. Why do we name organisms? Some reminders from the past. Taxon 51, 11-26.
Jess H. Jumawan, Jay Torrefiel, Inocencio E. Buot Jr (2016), Understanding the taxonomic skill of non-science major students: How the students would name and classify plants?; JBES, V9, N5, November, P55-62
https://innspub.net/understanding-the-taxonomic-skill-of-non-science-major-students-how-the-students-would-name-and-classify-plants/
Copyright © 2016
By Authors and International
Network for Natural Sciences
(INNSPUB) https://innspub.net
This article is published under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0