Biological classification

is a method to group and categorize organisms by biological type, such as genus or species. Biological classification is part of scientific taxonomy.

scientific classification in biology,

Biological classification, or

Since the 1960s a trend called cladistic taxonomy (or cladistics or cladism) has emerged, arranging taxa in a hierarchical evolutionary tree, ignoring ranks. If a taxon includes all the descendants of some ancestral form, it is called monophyletic. Groups that have descendant groups removed from them (e.g. dinosaurs, with birds as offspring group) are termed paraphyletic, while groups representing more than one branch from the tree of life are called polyphyletic. A formal code of nomenclature, the International Code of Phylogenetic Nomenclature, or PhyloCode for short, is currently under development, intended to deal with names of clades. Linnaean ranks will be optional under the PhyloCode, which is intended to coexist with the current, rank-based codes.

5 Kingdom classification
Monera

(includes Eubacteria and Archeobacteria) Individuals are single-celled, may or may not move, have a cell wall, have no chloroplasts or other organelles, and have no nucleus. Monera are usually very tiny, although one type, namely the blue-green bacteria, look like algae. They are filamentous and quite long, green, but have no visible structure inside the cells. No visible feeding mechanism. They absorb nutrients through the cell wall or produce their own by photosynthesis.

 Protista Protists are

single-celled and usually move by cilia, flagella, or by amoeboid mechanisms. There is usually no cell wall, although some forms may have a cell wall. They have organelles including a nucleus and may have chloroplasts, so some will be green and others won't be. They are small, although many are big enough to be recognized in a dissecting microscope or even with a magnifying glass. Nutrients are acquired by photosynthesis, ingestion of other organisms, or both.

 Fungi

Fungi

are multicellular,with a cell wall, organelles including a nucleus, but no chloroplasts. They have no mechanisms for locomotion. Fungi range in size from microscopic to very large ( such as mushrooms). Nutrients are acquired by absorption. For the most part, fungi acquire nutrients from decaying material.

mushroom

Fungi on bread

Plantae Plants are multicellular and most don't move, although gametes of some plants move using cilia or flagella. Organelles including nucleus, chloroplasts are present, and cell walls are present. Nutrients are acquired by photosynthesis (they all require sunlight). Animalia Animals are multicellular, and move with the aid of cilia, flagella, or muscular organs based on contractile proteins. They have organelles including a nucleus, but no chloroplasts or cell walls. Animals acquire nutrients by ingestion.

Binomial nomenclature (also called binary nomenclature) is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin grammatical forms, although they can be based on words from other languages. The first part of the name identifies the genus to which the species belongs; the second part identifies the species within the genus. For example, humans belong to the genus Homo and within this genus to the species Homo sapiens. The introduction of this system of naming species is credited to Linnaeus, effectively beginning with his work Species Plantarum in 1753.

Carolus Linnaeus

 Cladistics

(Ancient Greek: , klados, "branch") is a method of classifying species of organisms into groups called clades, which consist of an ancestor organism and all its descendants (and nothing else). For example, birds, dinosaurs, crocodiles, and all descendants (living or extinct) of their most recent common ancestor form a clade. In the terms of biological systematics, a clade is a single "branch" on the "tree of life".

 Cladists

use cladograms diagrams which show ancestral relations between species. Although traditionally such cladograms were generated largely on the basis of morphological characters (external).