Aristotle’s scientific contributions to the classification, nomenclature and distribution of marine organisms

Abstract

The biological works of the Greek philosopher Aristotle include a significant amount of information on marine animals. In the present study, an overview of his scientific contribution to the knowledge of marine biodiversity and specifically to taxonomic classification, nomenclature and distribution of marine species is attempted. Our results showed that Aristotle’s approach looks remarkably familiar to present day marine biologists since: (i) although not directly aiming at it, he gave a taxonomic classification of marine animals, which includes physical groups ranked on three levels at least; (ii) most of Aristotle’s marine “major groups” correspond to taxa of the order rank in Linnaeus’s classification and to taxa of the class rank in the current classification; (iii) a positive correlation was found between the number of taxa per group identified in Aristotle’s writings and those described by Linnaeus; (iv) his classification system exhibits similarities with the current one regarding the way taxa are distributed to higher categories. (v) a considerable number of Aristotle’s marine animal names have been used for the creation of the scientific names currently in use; (vi) he gave the first account of the Mediterranean marine fauna, focusing on the Aegean Sea and adjacent areas. Taking into account all the above, we suggest that the foundations of marine taxonomy as laid down by Aristotle are still echoing today.

Phylogenetic Signal in Characters from Aristotle’s History of Animals

“…Our analyses, like those of Fürst von Lieven and Humar's (2008), suggest that Aristotle recognized more than two ranks of named taxa; this interpretation is also explicit in Voultsiadou et al (2017: fig. 1), which shows a classification of animals with three main levels and a fourth one for a few taxa.…”

“…2), as far as we can tell. Part of this hierarchy was already noticed by Voultsiadou et al (2017: fig. 1).…”

“…Of course, he must have conceptualized these relationships in terms of similarity rather than kinship (phylogeny). Voultsiadou et al (2017) similarly argued that Aristotle made tremendous progress in taxonomy and that his attempts at classifying animals according to other (i.e., not phylogenetic) criteria, such as reproductive mode and lifestyle, were misinterpreted by subsequent authors. These were not combined into a fuzzy taxonomy with overlapping taxa because Aristotle distinguished groups of animals that take a certain name, which we call taxa, from groups based on other criteria, such as lifestyle, which he arguably did not intend to be considered as taxa (Voultsiadou et al 2017: 477).…”

Polychaetes of Greece: an updated and annotated checklist

“…Aristotle, although he tended to neglect polychaetes in his works on natural history (Voultsiadou et al 2017) gave the first description of a “scolopendra thalassia” (referring to Hermodice carunculata Pallas, 1776): “ There are also marine scolopendras, similar to the terrestrial ones, but smaller in size; they live on the rocky substrates. Their colour is richer red and they bear more and much slender feet than the terrestrial scolopendras.…”

Governing coral reef conservation in the digital society

“…Public participation in knowledge production about the natural world is not new. Almost 2500 years ago, local fishermen from the island of Lesbos assisted Aristotle, the 'father of marine biology', with his empirical research at the Aegean Sea (Voultsiadou et al, 2017). Today, millions of volunteers collaborate with scientists by collecting, processing and/or interpreting data (Bonney et al, 2016).…”