Lesson 1 Notes: Organisms

An organism is a living thing. In order to be living you must: – Grow – Reproduce – Respond to the environment – Be made up of cell(s) These four things are known as “life processes”.

These “life processes” are supported by an organisms ability to get energy. Many organisms get their energy by eating, digesting, and excreting. (Can be found in vocabulary as “digestion” and “excretion”)

Taxonomy is the science of classifying living things. Living things are classified in the following system: Kingdom  Phylum  Class  Order  Family  Genus  Species This order can be remembered by reciting: King Phillip Came Over For Good Spaghetti.

As you get further down the pyramid, you get more and more specific. For example, we are the same as an ostrich up into “class”.

Yesterday in class, you made up fake scientific names for the organisms on the card. Organisms’ actual scientific names are made up of the genus and the species. – The genus is always the first part of the name and the species is the second. A dog’s scientific name is Canis lupus familiaris. – In the genus Canis is the domestic dog, wolves, coyotes, jackals, and many extinct species. – Canis lupus familiaris is a subspecies of Canis lupus, which is the classification for the gray wolf. – Therefore, dogs are related to wolves, coyotes, and jackals.

A cladogram is a branching diagram showing relationships between a number of species. Please draw the cladogram below – do not draw the pictures, just write the names of the organisms. According to the cladogram, a hamster is more closely related to a chimpanzee than it is to a salmon.