Weak Conceptual Knowledge Base of Zoological Classification in Students Pursuing Higher Education

Background: Zoology is one of the favorite subjects of the biology group students interested in knowing about themselves and the animals around them.However, zoology comprises a package of animal-related sub-fields; the subject's basics lie in the subdiscipline: Taxonomy, systematics, and Diversity studies.These studies are often called Zoological Classification studies in which the student is given detailed information about the systematic division of animals into different taxonomical ranks based on their morphological and anatomical characteristics.Thus, all the zoological studies courses begin with animal taxonomical studies, followed by more profound studies into sub-fields.Method: The students who opt for Zoology in higher education generally have poor confidence in taxonomy and systematics.The present study was conducted on a group of graduate and post-graduate students to assess their knowledge based on various aspects of Taxonomy and Systematics by attempting a multiple-choice questionnaire.Result: The results were computed to estimate the aspect-wise understanding of the students.It was found that an average of more than 50% of the questions were answered incorrectly or left unanswered.Conclusion: This showed that systematics, a sub-discipline of zoology, is difficult to understand and even students do not enjoy learning it and often skip classification-related questions.