Middle School Science/Biology/Life Classification

Life Classification

Concept

Lifeforms (organisms) are classified into groups to create a hierarchy of life.

The hierarchy of life has many divisions in it. The basic divisions are as follows:

Domain
- Kingdom
  - Phylum
    - Class
      - Order
        Family
        Genus
        Species

Examples

The Five Kingdoms

All life can be classified under one of five kingdoms.

Kingdom: Bacteria
Kingdom: Protista (Protists)
Kingdom: Fungi
Kingdom: Plantae (Plants)
Kingdom: Animalia (Animals)

Classification of Humans

Humans are living things and therefore can be classified into this hierarchy.

'Human Classification':

Kingdom: Animilia (animals)
- Phylum: Chordata (animals with a vertebrate)
  - Class: Mammalia (mammals)
    - Order: Primates
      - Family: Hominidae (human-like)
        Genus: Homo
        Species: sapiens

Scientifically, the human species is identified as Homo sapiens.

Expository Text

Think of all the different animals that you can. Make a list of all the ones that you know about--cats, dogs, elephants, giraffes, lions, tigers, bears, bugs. Now add to the list all of the plants that you can think of--pine trees, palm trees, carrots, apples trees, lettuce, cactus, grass. Combining these will create a long list of things is hard to look at and even harder to study from. There are more than 1.5 million species of organisms that have been identified by scientists. In order to study all of these organisms, scientists have put them into different categories, in other words, they classify them.