Lesson Plan

7. Diversity in living organism
P 80 A1-There are a wide range of life forms (about 10 million −13 million species) around us. These life forms have existed and evolved on the Earth over millions of years ago. The huge range of these life forms makes it very difficult to study them one by one. Therefore, we look for similarities among them and classify them into different classes to study these different classes as a whole. Thus, classification makes our study easier.
A2-Examples of range of variations observed in daily life are:
(i) Variety of living organisms in terms of size ranges from microscopic bacteria to tall trees of 100 metres.
(ii) The colour, shape, and size of snakes are completely different from those of lizards.
(iii) The life span of different organisms is also quite varied. For example, a crow lives for only 15 years, whereas a parrot lives for about 140 years.
P82 A1The kind of cells that living organisms are made up of is a more basic characteristic for classifying organisms, than on the basis of their habitat. This is because on the basis of the kind of cells, we can classify all living organisms into eukaryotes and prokaryotes. On the other hand, a habitat or the place where an organism lives is a very broad characteristic to be used as the basis for classifying organisms. For example, animals that live on land include earthworms, mosquitoes, butterfly, rats, elephants, tigers, etc. These animals do not resemble each other except for the fact that they share a common habitat. Therefore, the nature or kind of a cell is considered to be a fundamental characteristic for the classification of living organisms.
A2The primary characteristic on which the first division of organisms is made is the nature of the cell. It is considered to be the fundamental characteristic for classifying all living organisms. Nature of the cell includes the presence or absence of membrane-bound organelles. Therefore, on the basis of this fundamental... [continues]

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