singular/plural | Example 1 | Example 2 |
Kingdom/ Kingdoms | Animal | Plant |
Phylum / Phyla (sometimes Division/Divisions in Plant Kingdom) | (Vertebrates) | Flowering plants (angiosperms) |
Class / Classes | Mammals | Dicots |
Order / Orders | Primates | Ranales/Ranunculales |
Family / Families | Hominidae (apes) | Ranunculaceae |
Genus / Genera | Homo | Ranunculus |
Species/ Species | sapiens | acris |
Common name | Man | Field buttercup |
This method of classification can be used in descriptions to cover anything from large groups to individual organisms, i.e. it can be general or specific (see above!).
Latin and Greek words are used to give special names to each individual organism, and also to the groups. This has the disadvantage of unfamiliarity, but it is a fairly international system which cuts out many of the disadvantages of "common names" for organisms, (assuming they have one!).
There is also a special way of writing the scientific name for an individual organism or (species) - which confusingly is always in 2 parts:
1)The genus name always starts with a capital letter,- Homo
2)The species name (sometimes called the trivial name) is always in small (lower case) letters - sapiens.
Both words (called the binomial - e.g. Homo sapiens) should be printed in italics, or underlined if handwritten.
Sometimes an organism seems to have been given several different names by different authorities at different times, and there are rules about this (often broken!) so sometimes you have to make allowances!
It is sometimes easier, but often not more informative, to use a KEY, prepared by a specialist, which identifies an organism in a particular situation, on the basis of a series of paired descriptions, or questions with a limited number of possible answers. Sometimes these keys are based on the same features used in classification, but sometimes they are based on arbitrary differences.
What drawbacks of a key can you think of?
> someone needs to know what is likely to be there (& what is not likely to be there), and produce the key accordingly - but being a specialist they may make it more complicated than the user expects!
What features are not a good idea to have in a key?
> overall size, internal features, colour if variable