Basic Vocabulary in Biology
If you don’t quite remember or haven’t been taught a certain vocab word, you might want to look down this list for a quick lesson on some words you might want to know to better understand these tutorials.
Insects vs Spiders
Insects and spiders are two different things! If you were to look at a picture of a spider, you would notice that they have eight legs while ants, for instance, have six. This difference may seem small, but this and many other differences (like life cycle, and other body parts) are significant enough that they are scientifically not the same. You can usually tell the difference between the two based on the number of legs that they have (six legs or eight legs) but because, in nature, both spiders and insects might lose their legs, it might be helpful to know a few other identification methods. Insects usually have wings (like bees, butterflies, and beetles) while spiders do not. Spiders also have two body segments while all insects have three. It’s also worth knowing that spiders aren’t the only small creatures that have eight legs, spiders are actually part of a larger group of organisms called arachnids that include spiders, ticks, and scorpions.
Organism
Anything that is or was living. Bacteria, strawberries, deer, and even humans are organisms. Robots, crystals, and the planets aren’t considered organisms. Fun fact: whether viruses are organisms or not is still being debated, over 100 years after they were first discovered!
Specimen
Professionally, this term usually refers to something that is being researched. For our purposes, a specimen could be anything that you put under a microscope (like rocks, organisms, or any other material).