Classification of Living things

What is life? All living things have the following traits: 1. are made of Cell(s) 2. contain similar chemicals 3. use energy 4. respond to their surroundings 5. grow and develop 6. reproduce

Classification  You are in Wal-mart and your mom gives you 10 minutes to go pick up the new Katy Perry CD! It should be an easy task. You would go to electronics, then music section, then look up Pop music, and then the Letter P to find the CD. Now imagine if you had to shop for these same items in a store where things were randomly placed throughout the store. Where would you begin? You’d have to search through a lot of things before you found it. You could be there for a long time!  Stores organize their products by category. Scientists organize living things in much of the same way.  Classification is the process of grouping things based on their similarities.

Why classify?  Biologists use classification to organize living things into groups so that the organisms are easier to study and understand their traits.  To help us all the organize and name species we discover.

What is taxonomy?  Taxonomy is the branch of biology concerned with the grouping and naming of organisms  Biologists who study this are called taxonomists

Aristotle and Classification  Many hundreds of years before Linnaeus, a Greek scholar named Aristotle developed a classification system for animals. Aristotle first divided animals into those he considered to have blood and those he did not. This graph shows Aristotle’s classification system for “animals with blood.”

Who is Carolus Linnaeus?  Carolus Linnaeus (1707 –1778) was a Swedish botanist  Developed a 8-level (taxa) classification system based on similarities between organisms

The Modern levels of organization of living things are:  1 – Domain  2--Kingdom  3 - Phylum  4-- Class  5 - Order  6 - Family  7 - Genus  8 - Species A way to remember:  Dumb  Kids  Playing  Catch  On  Freeways  Get  Squashed

How does it work?  There are 3 Big groups called Domains (level 1)  Those Domains are divided into 6 kingdoms (level 2), etc….  Each level gets more specific as fewer organisms fit into any one group.

Level 7--Genus…  A genus consists of a group of closely related species  The genus name is always Capitalized

Level 8--Species...  A species consists of animals that can mate and produce fertile offspring  The species name is always lowercase

An animal is known by two names…  Example: Canis lupus is the scientific name for a gray wolf.  Canis is the genus name  lupus is the species name  It is always written in the Latin Language

Why do we name species the way we do?  To give every species a name based on a standard method so scientists from different countries can talk about the same animal without confusion

Example #1: Classification of the Great White Shark - Carcharadon carcharias Level 1---Domain 1. Eukaryote= Sharks have a Nucleus in their cells

Level 2 – Kingdom

3 - Phylum Level 3 – Phylum

4--Class Level 4 – Class

5--Order Level 5 – Order

Level 6--Family  The Order Carcharhiniforme has at least 215 species in 6 families, with some quite big differences, these are the families that make up the order....  Carcharhinidae - Requiem Sharks, includes sharks like the Blue Shark, Tiger shark etc., the biggest family in the biggest order of sharks  Sphyrnidae - Hammerheads, 8 species  Hemigaleidae - Weasel sharks, 7 species in the family  Triakidae - Houndsharks - 37 species  Proscylliidae - finback catsharks 5 species  Scyliorhinidae - Catsharks species.

Level 7--Genus  Here the genus is Carcharhinus.  The members of the genus Carcharhinus are set apart from other Atlantic members of the family Carcharhinidae by the following combination of characters:  The first dorsal fin is at least as near to the level of the pectorals  second dorsal fin much smaller than first dorsal  edges of upper teeth more or less finely serrate

Level 8 --Species  Let's look at my friend "Crunch", he's a Great white Shark - Carcharadon carcharias  Kingdom - Animalia  Phylum - Chordata  Class - Chondrichthyes  Order - Lamniforme  Family - Laminidae  Genus - Carcharadon  Species - Carcharadon carcharias

Classification of Humans Domain: Eukarya ( Dumb ) Kingdom: Animalia (Kids) Phylum: Chordata (Playing) Class: Mammalia (Catch) Order: Primata (On) Family: Hominidae (Freeways) Genus: Homo (Get) Species: Homo sapiens---(Squashed) Example #2: Human

 A Sample Classification  The lion belongs to the following groups:  Kingdom Animalia (includes all animals)  Phylum Chordata (includes all vertebrate animals, as well as some other more primitive ones)  Class Mammalia (includes all mammals)  Order Carnivora (includes carnivorous mammals, from bears to raccoons to harbor seals)  Family Felidae (includes all cats)  Genus Panthera (includes the great roaring cats: lions, tigers, jaguars, and leopards)  Species leo (lions!) Example #3: Lion

Example #4: Virginia Owl