Lesson 5 of 8 · 7 min
Species and genus
NCERT §1.2.1–1.2.2
In the zoo, three enclosures in a row hold a lion, a tiger and a leopard. The sign above all three says 'Panthera'. Back home, the neighbour's cat is not a Panthera at all. Why not?
The lesson in notes
In short
A species is a group of individual organisms with fundamental similarities. It should be distinguishable from closely related species by distinct morphological differences.
In Mangifera indica, Solanum tuberosum and Panthera leo, the words indica, tuberosum and leo are specific epithets, while Mangifera, Solanum and Panthera are genera, a higher level of taxon.
A genus may contain one species or several that resemble one another. Panthera has another species, tigris; Solanum includes nigrum and melongena besides tuberosum.
Human beings belong to the species sapiens of the genus Homo, written Homo sapiens.
A genus is a group of related species that share more characters with one another than with species of other genera; genera are aggregates of closely related species.
Potato (Solanum tuberosum) and brinjal (Solanum melongena) are two different species of the one genus Solanum.
The lion (Panthera leo), the tiger (P. tigris) and the leopard (P. pardus) have several features in common and all sit in the genus Panthera. Cats belong to a separate genus, Felis.
Once a genus has been named in full, later mentions may shorten it to its capital initial, as in P. pardus.