Taxonomy is the scientific study responsible for determine the systematic classification of different things into categories.
In biology, taxonomy is the branch responsible for the identification and classification of all animals and plants that inhabit the Earth, based on the different characteristics they share with each other.
The idea of standardizing living beings came from the work of the Austrian botanist Carl von Linné (also known as Carlos Lineu, in Portuguese).
Linné was the inventor of the current classification of living beings into different groups (known as taxons), according to their genetic similarities: Kingdom, Philo, Class, Order, Family, Gender and Species.
The degree of kinship between living beings increases according to the approximation they have from the “Kingdom” group to the “Species”.
The “father of modern taxonomy”, Carl von Linné (1707 – 1778), defined some rules for the biological classification, for example, such as the use of Latin as the official language to write the classifications (because it is a “dead language” and that it will not suffer in future modifications).
In addition, another peculiarity is the way the species names must be written to be correctly identified. The name must be formed by the genus and the species to which the living being belongs. If there are animals of the same species but with different characteristics, subspecies are created to help differentiate them.
See also the meaning of Animal Kingdom.
Example:homo sapiens sapiens (human being) and Homo sapiens neanderthalensis (Neanderthal man)
It is noteworthy that the Genre must be written with the first letter in capitals and the lowercase type, but both terms must be spelled in italics or underlined, according to the rule.
A species is formed by a set of individuals with their particular characteristics in common and that they manage to reproduce with each other, creating fertile offspring.
Learn about the meaning of species homo sapiens.
Currently, living beings are subdivided into five Kingdoms that, from then on, will be subdivided into different categories, according to their similarity to each other.
- Kingdom of Monera: unicellular living beings and prokaryotes – bacteria and cyanobacteria;
- Protist Kingdom: are the protozoa (unicellular, eukaryotes and prokaryotes) and algae;
- Kingdom Fungi: are the fungi;
- Kingdom Plantae or Metaphyta: they are plants (eukaryotes, multicellular, autotrophs and photosynthesizers);
- Kingdom Animalia or Metazoa: are the animals (eukaryotes, multicellular and heterotrophs).
Warning: viruses do not enter this classification as they are not considered living beings, as they cannot reproduce.
