A Case Study in Classification Why do scientists classify living things?
People classify things all the time, and usually for a very good reason: categorized things are easier to handle. Think of a mechanic doing a tune-up on the family car. If he needs a particular wrench to loosen the oil pan plug, he’ll be able to do his job more efficiently if he has all his wrenches sorted by size in one drawer of his tool chest, rather than tossed together willy-nilly.
Taxonomy is the science of classifying living things, and taxonomists classify living things for much the same reason as mechanics classify tools. Living things are easier to study and discuss if they have been grouped together into categories on the basis of shared characteristics. Exactly how taxonomy has done this, however, has changed over the years, and the reason why it has changed has significance for scientists - and biology students- who believe in the truth of God’s Word.
In this lab, you will read portions of Carl Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae along with the abstract from a modern scientific paper. An abstract is a paragraph that sums up a journal article or research paper, including the research question and the answer that the researchers found. This abstract that you will read is from a paper on the classification of myxozoans.
Myxozoans are microscopic marine and freshwater parasites whose primary hosts are mainly fish. The first myxozoan was identified in 1825, but myxozoans were not taxonomically classified until 1881. Since then, the taxonomy of myxozoans has undergone at least four major revisions, along with many minor revisions, and yet there is still disagreement on how they should be classified. You may not understand all the terminology in the follow passages, but don’t be too anxious about the specifics- were mainly interested in the central ideas. Your goal is to consider what classification is good for and what it’s not good for.
What is taxonomy?
the branch of science concerned with classification, especially of organisms; systematics.

What is an abstract?
a summary of the contents of a book, article, or formal speech.

What are myxozoans?
Microscopic, spore-forming, endoparasitic Cnidarians

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What are we mainly interested in finding from the following passages?