Explain how a scientific name gives information about a living thing and its close relatives?

Answer 1

Every recognized species on earth (at least in theory) is given a two-part scientific name. This system is called "binomial nomenclature." These names are important because they allow people throughout the world to communicate unambiguously about animal species. This works because there are sets of international rules about how to name animals and zoologists try to avoid naming the same thing more than once, though this does sometimes happen. These naming rules mean that every scientific name is unique. For example, if bluegill sunfish are given the scientific name Lepomis macrochirus, no other animal species can be given the same name. So, if you are a Russian scientist studying relatives of sunfish and you want to discuss bluegill sunfish with a Canadian researcher, you both use the scientific name and know exactly what the other is talking about.

Scientific names are also designed to tell you something about the animal's relationships with other animals. The scientific name of each species is made up of a generic name (generic epithet) and a specific name (specific epithet). In our bluegill sunfish example the generic epithet is Lepomis and the specific epithet is macrochirus. The generic epithet is the name of the genus (singular of genera) to which bluegill sunfish belong, the genus Lepomis. Some genera contain only one species but most genera are made up of many species. There are other species of sunfish in the genus Lepomis, examples are Lepomis cyanellus (green sunfish), Lepomis megalotis (longear sunfish), and Lepomis gibbosus (pumpkinseed sunfish). Notice that all of these species share the same generic epithet, this indicates that they are all thought to be more closely related to each other than to any other species of fish. The genus is the first level of taxonomic organization, in a way, because all species that are thought to be most closely related, are placed together in a genus.

Scientific names are often descriptive also, suggesting something about the animal. For instance, longear sunfishes have long and conspicuous operculum flaps (a hardened structure extending from the gill flap), making them look like they have long ears. The specific name, megalotis, means "big ears." Another example is yellow-headed Blackbirds, whose scientific name is Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus, which literally means "yellow-headed, yellow head." Scientific names also sometimes bear the names of people who were instrumental in discovering or describing the species. Myotis keenii, "Keen's mouse-eared bat," is named after a gentleman named Keen (Myotis means "mouse-eared"). They may also contain references to regions where the species are found, such as southern right whales, Eubalaena australis, which translates to "southern true-baleen." Finally, some scientific names reflect the common names given to these animals by native peoples, such as Oncifelis guigna, a small, South American cat species called guigna by people of Chile and Argentina.

Courtesy: http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/animal_names/scientific_name/

Answer 2

A scientific name consists of two parts: the genus and the species. The genus represents a group of closely related species, while the species distinguishes one particular organism within that genus. By looking at the scientific name, scientists can infer the evolutionary relationship between different organisms based on their shared genus.