What is Scientific Classification? | Types, Definition, Structure, Function & Facts

What is Scientific Classification?

Biological taxonomy is the way scientists classify and organize all life. This can help distinguish how similar or different living organisms are.

An Example of Classification:

Biological taxonomy works like a library. Inside the library, books are divided into certain zones: children’s books in one area, adult books in another, and teen books in another. In each of these sections, there will be additional divisions such as fiction and non-fiction. In these sections, there will be more sections like mystery novels, sci-fi and romance in the fiction section. In the end, you will come up with a single book.

Biological taxonomy works the same way. At the top are the kingdoms. It’s more like the adult section than the adult section. children’s section. The kingdoms divide life into large groups such as plants and animals. Under the realms, there are many divisions like fiction, non-fiction, mystery, etc. Finally, you come to species, like accessing books in a library.

7 main Classification Levels

There are seven main taxonomic levels: Kingdom, Division, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species. The two main kingdoms that come to mind are plants and animals. The scientists also listed four other kingdoms including bacteria, archaea, fungi, and protozoa. Sometimes an eighth level above the Realm called the Domain is used.

Classification for Humans

This is an example of how people are classified. You will see that our species is homo sapiens.

Fun ways to Memorize Biological Taxonom

A good way to memorize lists is to write a sentence using the first letters of the list. In this case, we want to remember gender, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species: K, P, C, O, F, G, S

Here are a few sentences:

• Kids prefer cheese over fried spinach.
• Koalas like chocolate or fruit, in general
• King Philippe came for good pasta
• Keep precious creatures organized for grumpy scientists

Interesting facts about Biological Taxonomy

Although the taxonomic system continues to be revised, Carolus Linnaeus, a Swedish plant scientist, is often credited with inventing the current system.

Animals with exoskeletons such as insects and crabs are part of the phylum Arthropoda and are commonly known as arthropods.

According to the Phylum Chordata, we have classes of animals with which many people are familiar, such as mammals, amphibians, reptiles, fish, and birds.

A species is generally defined as individuals that are able to reproduce (have offspring).