Classification of Living Things

How are things classified?

How do you know where to find an item at the grocery store?

If items were placed just anywhere, it would be very hard to find the milk!

But you know that milk is found in the Dairy section.

Similar items are placed together so they are easier to find.

Grouping Makes Things Easy!

• Living things are also placed in groups to make it easier to study them and their relationship to one another.

Classification Into Kingdoms

• All living things can be placed into one of six major categories called ‘Kingdoms’:– Animal (Animalia)– Plant (Plantae)– Fungi– Protist (Protista)– Eubacteria– Archeabacteria

Further Classification

• Organisms can be further classified based on other similarities, such as structure and early development. – Phylum– Class– Order– Family– Genus– Species

Going down the list, each category

contains organisms that are more and

more alike!

Classifying and Grocery Stores

• Classification of living things is much like organizing items in a grocery store.

• Similar organisms share the same category, just like similar items share shelf-space in the grocery store.

• Fuji apples and gala apples are both apples, both fruit, both produce, and both found in a grocery store.

Humans and Horses

• You might not think humans and horses are much alike, but:– Both are animals– Both have a backbone and four

limbs– Both have hair and bear live young– Both feed their young milk

Humans and Horses• And, there are many differences. • See how we only share three categories with

horses:Humans Horse

Kingdom: Animalia AnimaliaPhylum: Chordata ChordataClass: Mammalia MammaliaOrder: Primate PerissodactylaFamily: Hominidae EquidaeGenus: Homo EquusSpecies: H. sapiens E. ferus

Scientific Names Identify Organisms

• All living things are identified by two names, known as a scientific name.

• Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) developed this two-word naming system – now called binomial nomenclature.

• It is used by all scientists world-wide!

Binomial

Nomenclature

= Two-Name

System

Felis domesticus AKA – a cat.

Canis familiaris

• The system uses the organism’s genus for its first name, and its species for its second name.

• For example, the scientific name of dog is Canis familiaris

Genus and species names are of Latin origin and universal. No matter the language or country, Canis familiaris would mean the organism seen above!

Canis-Canine

• Canis is a Latin term that refers to dog-like, canine creatures.

• Wolves, coyotes, jackals, dingos, and dogs all belong to the genus Canis.

Canis species

• But wolves, coyotes, dogs, and jackals are different enough that they are considered separate species.

Canis

familiaris

Canis latrans

Canis lupus

Canis aureus

Writing Scientific Names

• When writing scientific names, the genus name is always capitalized and the species is not.

• Both names are italicized when typing.

Felis domesticus

Felis leo

Odocoileus hemionus

Practice Using Scientific Names

• Following are some scientific names – genus and species. Which of these are closely related?

A.Vulpes lagopusB. Tamias striatusC. Felis leoD.Vulpes fulvaE. Canis lupus

That’s Right!

Vulpes fulva and Vulpes lagopus belong to the same genus and are both species of fox!

Review

• All organisms are classified into one of six kingdoms based of similarities of structures and functions.

• All organisms are identified by a two-word naming system called binomial nomenclature.

• The two names use the organism’s genus and species classification.