Glossary

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The taxonomic hierarchy

The Linnaean hierarchy

The variety of life forms on earth is far too complex for the human mind to comprehend without some type of classification. Biologists have adopted and expanded the system initially devised by Linnaeus in the eighteenth century. The system is a hierarchy because all organisms are assigned to smaller and smaller groups as you move from higher levels down to lower levels. Each group at lower level is placed in one, and only one, group at a higher level. For zoologists, the official starting point is the tenth edition of Systema Naturae per Regna tria naturae, published in 1758 (in which Linnaeus described three species of phasmids). Before the time of Darwin, the classification was used for convenience without implying any relationship other than degree of similarity. As evolution became accepted by most biologists, there has been a major effort to make the classification correspond to the phylogeny (the evolutionary relationships among the groups). All animals are placed in a hierarchy that contains the following ranks:

  • Kingdom
  • Phylum (plural phyla)
  • Class
  • Order
  • Family
  • Genus (plural genera)
  • Species

Hierarchy used in species files

What is a taxon?

The rules of nomenclature

The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN)

The type system

Kinds of types

Status of names

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