Western Ghats Field Lab: Exploring Taxonomic Categories & Hierarchy
The Living World
As a field researcher at a biodiversity research station in the Western Ghats, identify and classify organisms by understanding taxonomic categories from species to kingdom, and learn how systematics reveals evolutionary relationships.
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📖 Your Story
You are a research intern at the Kerala Forest Research Institute's field station nestled in the lush Western Ghats — one of the world's eight hottest biodiversity hotspots. Your team leader, Dr. Meera Nair, is conducting a comprehensive survey of local flora and fauna. She wants you to understand how organisms are systematically arranged into taxonomic categories — from species all the way up to kingdom — and how systematics goes beyond mere classification to reveal evolutionary relationships. The Western Ghats, with its endemic species like the Nilgiri Tahr, Lion-tailed Macaque, and countless unique plants, provides the perfect living laboratory.
What You'll Learn
- Define systematics and explain how it includes identification, nomenclature, classification, and evolutionary relationships.
- Explain the concept of taxonomic hierarchy and how each step represents a rank or category (taxon).
- Define species as a group of individual organisms with fundamental similarities and distinguish it from the concept of genus.
- Illustrate how a genus can contain multiple species with morphological similarities, using examples like Panthera and Solanum.
How to Play
3 Missions Await
Expedition 1: Understanding Systematics
4 problems · 40 XP
Expedition 2: Decoding Species and Genus
4 problems · 60 XP
Expedition 3: Building the Taxonomic Framework
3 problems · 60 XP