How can living things be grouped

Nobody knows for certain when, how or why life began on Earth, but Aristotle observed 2, years ago that all the planet's biodiversity was of animal or plant origin. This initial observation by the Greek philosopher was expanded in the 19th and 20th centuries by the discovery of new kingdoms, finally arriving at today's widely-recognised five, which cover the 8.

The system of biological kingdoms is the way in which science classifies living things according to their ancestry over the course of evolution. This means that all the species that make up these five large groups - some recent theories split them further into six or even seven - have common ancestors and therefore share some of their genes and belong to the same family tree. As well as the kingdoms of living things there are other taxonomic categories within the same classification system such as, for instance, domain, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species.

They all follow a hierarchical order and are dependent on each other, so some divisions include others. In this way, the domain includes the kingdom, the kingdom the phylum, the phylum the class, and so on. All the species in a particular kingdom have similar characteristics in terms of their growth and the way they function. Now let's look at where the family relationships that define nature's kingdoms come from:.

Autotrophic makes its own food or heterotrophic feeds on other living things. Cell organisation. Unicellular having only one cell or multicellular having two or more cells. Cell type. Eukaryotes the genetic material is surrounded by a membrane or prokaryotes lacking a membrane.

Aerobic needs oxygen or anaerobic does not use oxygen. Sexual, asexual or through spores. Self-moving or static. The first person to divide living things into five broad kingdoms was North American ecologist Robert Whittaker. This researcher proved in that fungi were not plant organisms - previously it was thought that they were - and a decade later he proposed the creation of the fungi kingdom to differentiate them from plants. The Australian Museum respects and acknowledges the Gadigal people as the First Peoples and Traditional Custodians of the land and waterways on which the Museum stands.

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Levels of classification. Toggle Caption Blue Butterflies are Morpho spp. The orange and yellow butterflies are in the family Pieridae whites, yellows and sulphurs , and come from Brazil, Peru, Malaysia and Indonesia. The colours in these species are from pigments in contrast to the blue in Morpho. The series of specimens set upside down are the jewelled Nawab Polyura delphis. These specimens come from Malaysia, but the species is also found in India.

Levels of classification Taxonomists classify all organisms into a hierarchy, and give them standardised names, that are often Latin or Greek, or derived from other languages and even people's names. They are, from the most to the least inclusive: Kingdoms is the most basic classification of living things. Back to top. Search website Submit Search.

Some scientists now support the idea of a sixth kingdom of viruses. This is still being argued around the world. Each phylum is then divided into classes. Classes within the chordata phylum include mammals, insects, reptiles and fish, among others. The class will then be subdivided into an order. Within the mammals class, some examples of an order include:. From the order, the organism will be classified into a family. Within the order of primates, families include:. Finally, the classification will come to the genus and species.

These are the names that are most commonly used to describe an organism. Usually there are a group of organisms that make up a genus. An example within the primate family is the genus Homo for all human species Homo sapiens. When identifying species during a BioBlitz you can use technology such as iNaturalist to help you identify a genus and species.

Its scientific name is Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae. Scientific names are based on Latin and used all around the world. This universal scientific language allows scientists from different countries to understand each other. Every living thing is given a two-part name that tells us which genus it belongs to and then gives a unique species name. Ready for a quiz? Try the "Identifying Living Things" interactive activity. Grasshoppers are part of the animal kingdom and are classed as insects because they have six legs.