What are the levels of classification from least inclusive to most inclusive?

Learning Outcomes

• Explain how relationships are indicated by the binomial naming system

Taxonomy (which literally means “arrangement law”) is the science of classifying organisms to construct internationally shared classification systems with each organism placed into more and more inclusive groupings. Think about how a grocery store is organized. One large space is divided into departments, such as produce, dairy, and meats. Then each department further divides into aisles, then each aisle into categories and brands, and then finally a single product. This organization from larger to smaller, more specific categories is called a hierarchical system.

In the eighteenth century, a scientist named Carl Linnaeus first proposed organizing the known species of organisms into a hierarchical taxonomy. In this system, species that are most similar to each other are put together within a grouping known as a genus. Furthermore, similar genera (the plural of genus) are put together within a family. This grouping continues until all organisms are collected together into groups at the highest level. The current taxonomic system now has eight levels in its hierarchy, from lowest to highest, they are: species, genus, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom, domain. Thus species are grouped within genera, genera are grouped within families, families are grouped within orders, and so on (Figure 1).

Figure 1. This diagram shows the levels of taxonomic hierarchy for a dog, from the broadest category—domain—to the most specific—species. Click for a larger image.

The kingdom Animalia stems from the Eukarya domain. For the common dog, the classification levels would be as shown in Figure 1. Therefore, the full name of an organism technically has eight terms. For the dog, it is: Eukarya, Animalia, Chordata, Mammalia, Carnivora, Canidae, Canis, and lupus. Notice that each name is capitalized except for species, and the genus and species names are italicized. Scientists generally refer to an organism only by its genus and species, which is its two-word scientific name, in what is called binomial nomenclature. Each species has a unique binomial to allow for proper identification.

Therefore, the scientific name of the dog is Canis lupus. It is important that the correct formatting (capitalization and italics) is used when calling an organism by its specific binomial.

The name at each level is also called a taxon. In other words, dogs are in order Carnivora. Carnivora is the name of the taxon at the order level; Canidae is the taxon at the family level, and so forth. Organisms also have a common name that people typically use, in this case, dog. Note that the dog is additionally a subspecies: the “familiaris” in Canis lupus familiaris. Subspecies are members of the same species that are capable of mating and reproducing viable offspring, but they are considered separate subspecies due to geographic or behavioral isolation or other factors.

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this question asks us to place the levels of classification in order from least inclusive to most inclusive. So, um, doing the reverse of that? Let's just list out our orders of classic Asian and a great way to memorize this would be to think of the pneumonic device. Dear King Philip came over for good, Super. And obviously we would have domain kingdom vile. Um, class order, family, genus. The species. Okay, so let me just write that out. We have day for domain. Okay. For kingdom P for file. Um, see for class. Oh, for order half for family, Giefer, genius and us for species. So now we have this order and we are going from most inclusive over here to least inclusive with species. So now we just want to do the reverse of that. So we will list out. Now we're order. So we start with species, then genius than family, followed by order class file. Um, kingdom don't don't mean so with that now. Well, we have our answer to question number one

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