Classification of Living Things

All the living beings of the world are divided into various groups depending upon their similarities and characteristics. like appearance, reproduction, mobility, It makes easy to study about the organisms. We cannot study about the organisms separately, it is very difficult. They are arranged into different groups on the basis of their similarities and dissimilarities. The arrangement of living organisms into different groups is known as a classification of living organisms. CarolosLinnaeus divided the world of living organisms into two kingdoms: animal kingdom and plant kingdom.

Taxonomy

Taxonomy is the branch of science that deals with identification, nomenclature and classification of the living organisms. It is derived from two greek words- taxis means classification and nomos mean law. It is the science of naming, describing and classifying all the living organisms of the world.

Classification

The arrangement of organisms into groups based on particular characters is called classification. There are 7 levels of classification of living organisms: Kingdom, Phylum, Classes, Order, Families, Genus, and Species.

Nomenclature

The process of giving scientific names to plants and animals is called nomenclature. Linnaeus is known as the father of nomenclature as he was the first person to assign the generic name (first name) and the specific name (second name) to the plants and animals. The system of assigning two names, first generic name and second specific name in Latin to an organism is called binomial system of nomenclature. The generic and specific names should be underlined when written by hand and given in italics when printed. The group of closely related species is known as Genus. For example, dog, jackal, wolf are placed in the same genus. Species includes a group of individuals which resemble one another in all essential morphological and reproductive characters. Some of the examples are given below in table,

Importance of classification

Classification of organisms helps us in following ways:

1. It provides support in favor of evolution.
2. It takes a short period for the understanding of organisms.
3. It suggests us ways of giving scientific names to the organisms.
4. It shows natural relationship of organisms.
5. It makes the study of organisms easier and scientific.