Angiosperms

Angiosperms are flowering flora and are the most diverse lands plants with over 416 families, about 13,164 genres and approximately 295,383 species. This makes the flowering plants a vast part of the earth’s ecosystems with impacts on nearly every living thing, immediately and indirectly including effective and negative aspects. This abundance and significance have made the angiosperms a goal for scientific research with regards to their phylogeny and evolution. From this perspective, numerous articles have been written on the classification, fossil evolution and modern-day mutations in angiosperms, these aspects are covered each in primary and secondary sources of research on flowering plants. The two sources that shall be employed in this paper are a journal article and a secondary annual review article that consolidates information from various journals and presents to the scientific community and the general public for education and research purposes.

The two sources for this paper are; the journal article “The Origin and Diversification of Angiosperms”1 with doi: 10.3732/ajb.91.10.1614 and the review article Phylogeny and Evolution of Angiosperms2 (Soltis, Pamela and Endress)with DOI:https://doi.org/10.1641/B570612. This paper shall analyze both these article in terms of their form and content in a bid to bring out the distinction between primary and secondary sources of data. The former article contains first-hand research findings in the form of a report while the second document constitutes of a consolidated array of various researches on the same topic. It is important to note that as much as the wording of the topics are different, the two documents address the same elements which are the evolution of angiosperms and their continued diversification throughout this their evolutionary process. Last but not last, the authors of the journal article are also part of the co-author of the review articles which make this comparison easy to follow and understand.

Differences in Format

The journal article “The Origin and Diversification of Angiosperms” 1 (Soltis and Oltis) has a heading on the first page with the name of the journal “American Journal of Botany”, the year of publication the issue and number of pages. This is then followed by the heading of the journal followed with a superscript 1 to indicate that is a primary source of data as per the Council of Biology editors (CDE) requirements. The title is then followed by the Names of the authors wit appended superscript numbers that indicate there is additional information on the authors in the footnote or elsewhere on the same page, for example in the article “The Origin and Diversification of Angiosperms” 1, the numbers against the author names are partly explained immediately under their name while additional information is displayed that is not pertinent to the credibility of the content such as the author’s personal e-mail is displayed in the footnote area. Additionally, there is an abstract section after the names of the authors that give a brief overview of the paper contents. Keywords are included after the abstract to make it easier for the article to be found on the online platform. The subsequent pages all have a header that states the topic of the paper, the Surname of the authors, the year of publication and the page numbers in the journal where the article is found. Additionally, every figure and illustration in the journal are numbered and labeled appropriately with reference of where it was sourced from. Las but not least, the paper has literature cited section that has a large list of articles that were quoted and otherwise contributed to the research and findings.

The review article, Phylogeny, and Evolution of Angio-sperms2 does not have a centralized heading, the topic is placed on the rightmost column along with the name of the scholars. There is no abstract for this paper and its description clearly states that it is a review of information from a lot of journals on the topic of angiosperm diversity and evolution. As a matter of fact, the authors of the journal article above are both coauthors of this article since it is a scientific review and they are contributing their perspectives on the topic. The pages of this article have no headers apart from the designation “books” that appear on every far right and left sides of the pages alternatively. Additionally, some images in this secondary sources are not labeled. Last but not least, the paper has a list of references that indicate where the data and information therein can be located.

Distinction in Content

The two papers have the same basic content which explains the evolutionary and diverse nature of flowering plants, however, the journal article is more consistent in its approach to the topic with detailed information and complex scientific jargon that is aimed towards scientists and researchers. The article review, on the other hand, is brief and uses simple language, it has deliberately steered clear of any complex terms when possible. As a matter of fact, the secondary source ha not included the scientific names of the plants and has opted to employ the common names that the species and families are known by. Last but not least, the text in the journal is heavy on in-text citations while the review article has only a handful of citations.

Works Cited

Soltis, Douglas E, et al. “Phylogeny and Evolution of Angio-sperms.” 01 June 2007. Phylogeny and Evolution of Angiosperms. Document. 18 April 2017.

Soltis, Pamela s and Douglas E Oltis. “The Origin and Diversification of Angiosperms.” American Journal of Botany (2004): 1614-1626. Journal.