Intro to Taxonomy

Looking for the best phyoinformatics project, I started with reading some historical background about taxonomy in general; In the library I found this small book, titled: "Animal Taxonomy" by Theodore Savory, published by Heinemann Educational Books Ltd in London, 1970 (so it's quite old). However it includes great information on the ways to approach systematics and how taxonomy and the classification of organisms can help science. So, have we ever wonder.. 'Why classify?'- Classification is forced upon us by the limitations of the brain (Savory, 1970). Generally some believe that the human brain classifies instinctively and unintentionally. Classifying is considered as an innate mode of thinking and leads to a study that reveals both difference and similarities between the objects concerned (Savory, 1970). In science the need for classification is even more important. Phylogenity is considered as the imaginative side of theoretical zoology. It's main subject is evolution of animals and the objective of the scientists is the tracing of evolution. Therefore, the science of taxonomy is not aimed to classify the organisms, but also to look at them in depth, figure out their past, compare them and decide whether their differences are due to adaptation needs into different environments and whether the similarities are the result of a common ancestry or of convergent evolution. In two words systematics can just save ourselves from zoological chaos. ...and it's a true chaos if one thinks about it. There are so many organisms to include in the tree of life, that it would take us so much time, if every time we would need to present a tree of an organism we would have to do it by hand. Therefore, we can see a large progress made by classical taxonomy itself, which necessitated the introduction of new methods of analysis and new approaches to synthesis. Technology has made a significant progress, especially the last 10 years, while everyone has an easy access to the world of internet. Technology has helped taxonomy to evolve in an impressive extent. Data obtained from places all around the world are shared among scientists. Integrated data may help us learn many things we don't know. Nowadays we find many sources in the internet with load amounts of information. Combination of these sources can give us the best results. Choosing the best project for this class is challenging since there are so many aspects to think about and a couple of published papers to look through. I might be able to combine two of the projects suggested.. I still need some time to think about it..