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What's
in a name?
In this website, you will often come across a perfectly understandable name like 'Copperband butterflyfish' followed immediately by something like 'Chelmon rostratus'. 'Copperband butterflyfish' is the common name for the animal and 'Chelmon rostratus' is its scientific name.
Along the right hand margin are some of the more familiar members of the Phylum Mollusca. They appear different but they share similar features and a common ancestry. Thus they are grouped together. For example, they are soft-bodied, with a radula (rasping tongue) and many have shells. Here is another example showing the classification of sea stars, sea urchins, sand dollars and sea cucumbers. As if this were not confusing enough, scientific names may change as more is learnt about the ancestry and features of various plants and animals. Such new information may change the way living things are organised, and their scientific names are changed accordingly. Scientific names are written in italics. Sometimes, after the genus name, there is an abbreviation 'sp.' for 'a species' or 'spp.' for 'many species'. This means we are referring to members of a genus and not to a specific species. As the study of animals progresses, there are different ways of grouping animals based on new discoveries of their genetic |
Phylum
Mollusca
Some of the Classes in the Phylum Mollusca include the following... Class Gastropoda
Class Bivalvia Class Cephalopoda |
The
same animal may have different common names.
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