History of classification

Short history of classification

1. Classification of Living Things

2. Why Classify?
There are more than 2.5 million different
living things on earth.
Millions more have not yet been discovered.
Life is diverse and needs to be organized.
It is organized so that scientists all over the
world have a universal method of classifying.
Organisms are placed into groups with
biological similarities.

3. •Taxonomy
science of grouping organisms together
according to their presumed natural
relationships
•Aka: Classification
•Intro to Classification

4. History of Classification:
•Aristotle - 2000 years ago
•Plant or Animal
Stem differences Land dweller
Water dweller
Air dweller

5. Problems with this early system:
•Some plants and animals couldn’t be
classified using this system.
•People also used common names.
1. Common names - don’t describe things
accurately
•Example:
Jellyfish is not a fish

6. 2. Same common name for different species
Maple Trees = Silver Maple, Sugar Maple, &
Red Maple are each different species

7. Cougar, Mountain Lion, Puma
•By the 1700’s
scientists realized that
common names were
too confusing.
•They vary among
languages and even
regions.

8. 1st attempt used physical descriptions in great detail.
•“Oak with deeply
divided veins that
have no hairs on their
undersides and no
teeth around their
edges”

9. Carolus Linnaeus
•Binomial
Nomenclature
•All organisms are
called by their Genus
and species
•Binomial
Nomenclature - “two
names”

10. Canus latrans

11. Canus lupus

12. Canus domesticus

13. What do you notice about all of the
scientific names?
•All use Latin (universal)
•Two names = Genus & species
•Whole name is in Italics
•First letter of the Genus is Capitalized
•First letter of the species is lower case

14. Linnaeus’s System of Classification
•He used 7 taxonomic
(taxa) categories that
went from the
largest down to the
smallest
.

15. How are organisms classified?
Kingdom (6)
Phylum
Class
Order
Family
Genus
Species

16. Species
Genus
Family
Order
Class
Phylum/division
Kingdom

17. WAKE UP!!!

18. Kingdom: Animalia

19. Phylum: Chordata

20. Class: Mammalia

21. Order: Carnivora

22. Family: Ursidae

23. Genus: Ursus or UrsusUrsus

24. Species: arctos or arctos

25. Kingdom - Animalia
Phylum - Chordata
Class - Mammalia
Order - Carnivora
Family - Urisdae
Genus - Ursus
Species - arctos
Grizzly Bear

27. •Seven Levels of Classification

28. The End