Taxonomical Aids - Practice Questions & MCQ

Taxonomical aids are aids that help in s\studies of taxonomy. These include herbariums, botanical gardens, zoological parks, museums, taxonomic keys etc.

Herbarium:

• It refers to the storehouse of collected plant specimens that are dried, pressed and preserved on herbarium sheets. 
• They contain labels which include information about their botanical, local or English name, the part collected, date and place of collection, the name of the collector, Family of a specimen, economically important parts, etc. 

Functions of herbarium

• It provides information about local flora and flora of other locations also.
• They can be used for identification of unknown specimens
• Can be used to depict morphological variations found among species.
• It provides information about local plant varieties

Botanical Gardens:

• Botanical gardens contain a collection of living plants. 
• The collections present in them are grown for identification purposes and each plant have a label stating its botanical/scientific name and its family. 
• The famous botanical gardens are at Kew (England), Indian Botanical Garden, Howrah (India) and at National Botanical Research Institute, Lucknow (India).

Museum- 

• These are specific museums present in educational institutes. 
• They include collections of preserved plant and animal specimens for study and reference. 
• Specimens are preserved in jars.
• The specimens may also be preserved as dry specimens. Small animals such as insects are captured, killed and kept as specimens. Larger animals including birds and mammals are kept preserved by stuffing. In museums, skeletons of animals are also kept. 

Zoological parks- 

• These are parks which keep wild animals under protection. 
• Zoological parks are a method of conservation also. 
• The animals here are provided with conditions that are similar to their natural habitat. 

 Keys-

• These are the tools used for identification of unknown plants and animals based on their special characteristics. 
• The keys are based on the contrasting characters generally in a pair called couplet. It represents the choice made between two opposite options. 
• This results in the acceptance of only one and the rejection of the other. 
• Each statement in the key is called a lead. Separate taxonomic keys are required for each taxonomic category such as family, genus and species for identification purposes.
•  Keys are generally analytical in nature.
• Keys can be indented keys or bracketed keys. 
• Indented keys- The key contains a sequence of choices between two or more characteristics. By careful selection of characters at each subdivision, the name of organisms can be found out.
• Bracketed keys- this key uses contrasting characters like the indented key but they are not separated by intervening subdividing characters, each character is given a number in brackets.