Taxonomy facts for kids
Taxonomy is a special part of science. It's all about the rules and ideas for putting things into groups. Think of it like organizing your toys or books, but for everything in the world! When scientists use taxonomy, they can create many different ways to classify things.
The most famous type of taxonomy is used to group all living things, both those alive today and those that lived long ago. Every living thing has a unique scientific name. This name is part of its biological classification. The scientific name is the same everywhere in the world. This helps scientists from different countries understand each other when they talk or write about a specific animal or plant. Also, each species has a place in the big tree of life. For example, a crow is called Corvus corone. It belongs to the Corvidae family and is a passerine bird. While some classifications are well-known, others are still being discussed and changed by scientists.
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How Scientists Group Life
Living things are first divided into three main groups called domains: bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes. The biggest group within a domain is the kingdom. Each kingdom then has many smaller groups inside it, called phyla. Each phylum has even smaller groups called classes. This pattern is like a tree with big branches, and then smaller branches growing from them.
Scientists put each species into a group based on things like what it eats, how it moves, special body parts, and more. As you go down the tree, the groups get smaller and smaller. At the very end, the groups (genera) are tiny. Then, each species in a genus gets its own unique name.
Here are the main groups (or ranks) used in taxonomy, from biggest to smallest:
You can remember this order with a fun saying:
- King Phillip Came Over From Greater Spain.
Naming Species: Two Names Are Better!
When scientists write about a living thing and its official scientific name, they use two names. This is called binomial nomenclature, which means "two-name naming." The first name is the genus name, and the second name is the specific species within that genus. For example, the scientific name for a domestic cat is Felis catus. Sometimes, if the genus is already known, scientists might just write F. catus.
Why Latin?
When people first started giving scientific names to species, Latin was a language widely used by educated people in Europe. Because of this, all species names are still written in Latin. This has some good points! Since Latin is no longer spoken every day, it doesn't change over time. Also, no one country "owns" it. This helps avoid problems where every language has its own different names for animals and plants.
Scientists used to write the official description of each new species in Latin. But things are changing! Since 2012, the International Botanical Congress allows English (as well as Latin) for describing new plant species. For animals, the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature suggests choosing a language that many people use, especially in the places where the species lives.
Modern Taxonomy: Cladistics
A newer way to classify living things is called cladism. This method looks at how living things are related through evolution, like branches on a family tree. It uses shared features to decide how groups are connected. Cladism tries to make sure that all the members of a group come from a single common ancestor.
This means that some traditional groups might change. For example, birds are now seen not just as a separate class, but as a subgroup of dinosaurs. This is because birds evolved directly from dinosaurs. Scientists often use DNA information to help them make these decisions. Today, how we classify living things is a mix of the older Linnaean system and the newer cladistic ideas. Because of new discoveries, especially with DNA, classification is changing quickly!
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