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    Classification of Organisms

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    Muyunda Mutumba
    Taxonomy is the science of classifying organisms using a hierarchical system of taxa from most general to most specific. There are six kingdoms of organisms - Bacteria, Archaea, Protista, Fungi, Animalia, and Plantae. Each organism is assigned a unique two-part scientific name with the genus first, followed by the specific epithet. A dichotomous key uses contrasting observable characteristics to identify organisms by successively choosing between two alternatives.

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    Classification of Organisms

    Uploaded by

    Muyunda Mutumba
    76 views2 pages
    Taxonomy is the science of classifying organisms using a hierarchical system of taxa from most general to most specific. There are six kingdoms of organisms - Bacteria, Archaea, Protista, Fungi, Animalia, and Plantae. Each organism is assigned a unique two-part scientific name with the genus first, followed by the specific epithet. A dichotomous key uses contrasting observable characteristics to identify organisms by successively choosing between two alternatives.

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    Taxonomy is the science of classifying organisms using a hierarchical system of taxa from most general to most specific. There are six kingdoms of organisms - Bacteria, Archaea, Protista, Fungi, Animalia, and Plantae. Each organism is assigned a unique two-part scientific name with the genus first, followed by the specific epithet. A dichotomous key uses contrasting observable characteristics to identify organisms by successively choosing between two alternatives.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    76 views2 pages

    Classification of Organisms

    Uploaded by

    Muyunda Mutumba
    Taxonomy is the science of classifying organisms using a hierarchical system of taxa from most general to most specific. There are six kingdoms of organisms - Bacteria, Archaea, Protista, Fungi, Animalia, and Plantae. Each organism is assigned a unique two-part scientific name with the genus first, followed by the specific epithet. A dichotomous key uses contrasting observable characteristics to identify organisms by successively choosing between two alternatives.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    CLASSIFICATION OF ORGANISMS

    Taxonomy
    Taxonomy is the science of naming and classifying organisms.

    In taxonomy, organisms are classi ed into a structural hierarchy. The levels of the hierarchy are
    called taxa.

    The naming system which taxonomists use to name organisms is called binomial nomenclature.

    Taxa
    In the hierarchy of classi cation, there are eight taxa. When listed from the most general to the
    most speci c, the taxa are domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species.
    Taxonomists use the term division in place of the term phylum when classifying plants.

    Domains and Kingdoms


    There are three domains of organisms. These are Bacteria, Archaea and Eukarya. Organisms in
    the domains Bacteria and Archaea have prokaryotic cells. Those that are in the domain Eukarya
    have eukaryotic cells.

    In Domain Bacteria, there is only one kingdom, namely Kingdom Bacteria. The same applies to
    Domain Archaea. It only has one kingdom called Kingdom Archaea.

    Domain Eukarya consists of four kingdoms. These are Kingdom Protista, Kingdom Fungi,
    Kingdom Animalia and Kingdom Plantae.

    In total, there are six kingdoms of organisms.

    Kingdom Main Characteristics


    Bacteria • Have a prokaryotic cell

    • Unicellular

    • Live in moderate environmental conditions


    Archea • Have a prokaryotic cell

    • Unicellular

    • Live in extreme environmental conditions


    Protista • Have a eukaryotic cell

    • Unicellular
    Fungi • Have eukaryotic cells

    • Multicellular

    • Saprotrophic
    Animalia • Have eukaryotic cells

    • Multicellular

    • Heterotrophic
    Plantae • Have eukaryotic cells

    • Multicellular

    • Phototrophic

    Binomial Nomenclature
    The binomial nomenclature assigns each organism a two-part scienti c name. The rst part is the
    organism’s genus and the second part is the species.

    By convention, scienti c names are always italicised or underlined. The genus name is always
    capitalised and the species name is always written in lowercase and italicised. For example, the
    scienti c name of the dagga plant is Canabis sativa. In this case, Canabis is the name of the
    genus, and sativa is the species name. However, it should be noted that the acceptable way of
    naming a species is by mentioning both the genus name and the species name.

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    Examples of Hierarchical Classi cation

    House Cat Dog


    Domain Eukarya Eukarya
    Kingdom Animalia Animalia
    Phylum Chordata Chordata
    Class Mammalia Mammalia
    Order Carnivora Carnivora
    Family Felidae Canidae
    Genus Felis Canis
    Species Felis casus Canis familiaris

    Dichotomous Key
    A dichotomous key is a biological tool which enables one to identify an organism by progressively
    opting between two alternative observable characteristics.

    The importance of a dichotomous is that it is used to identify organisms quickly and accurately.

    The following are the considerations that need to be made when constructing a dichotomous key:

    • use observable characteristics only;

    • start with major characteristics, placing organisms into two groups at each stage;

    • use a single characteristics at a time;

    • use contrasting characteristics at each stage e.g 1(a) short, 1(b) tall;

    • avoid repeating the same characteristics.

    The procedure of using a dichotomous key is as follows:

    • look at the features of similarities;

    • look at the features of di erences between the organisms;

    • we can then be able to identify the organisms by distinguishing one from another;

    • use a method of elimination by following statements that are correct only for the organism.

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