LA 1203 : Midterm Study Guide
Document Summary
Organizing or grouping things helps in dealing with them. If organisms (or any items) are to be grouped they need a name. Taxonomy is the branch of biology concerned with naming and classifying the diverse forms of life. There are many ways that organisms can be grouped. One of the early classification systems placed animals in one group and plants in another. The bacteria, fungi, and many protists were considered plants while some of the protists were grouped with animals. The foundation for modern classification, binomial nomenclature, was developed by linnaeus in the. Linnaeus also developed a scheme where organisms are classified or grouped into categories. These categories are further divided into smaller and smaller groupings creating an organizational hierarchy. The lowest two categories of the taxonomic hierarchy (genus and species) make up the scientific name for an organism. The major taxonomic categories from most inclusive (biggest set) to least inclusive (smallest set) are:
