What is scientific classification in biology?
Scientific classification is a system used by biologists to classify all life on Earth. It is also known as scientific classification in biology or Linnean Classification , after Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778), which first tried this huge project. The pioneering work was Systema Naturae , first released in 1735, which passed twelve editions throughout life Linnaeus. The first version had several thousand records grouped into taxa based on shared physical characteristics. Today, more than two million species are recognized by science, although the total number of plant, animal and unicellular species on Earth is estimated at 10 to 100 million.
The scientific classification system used in biology is hierarchical, with eight levels of categorization. They are the smallest to the largest: species, family, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom and domain. Between these levels, even more divisions are often added because life itself no special duty to be naturally kategShe only oversized at only eight hierarchical levels. If you want to give an example of everyone, consider the position of people in scientific classification. People are types homo sapiens , genus homo , family hominidae (large apes), primate of the order, class mammals (mammals), phylum Chordat (vertebrae and several close relatives), domain eukarya (eukaryotes).
The highest level of scientific classification has changed several times over the years. In 1735 Linnaeus introduced two kingdoms: vegetabilia (plants and mushrooms) and animal. In 1866, the German biologist Ernst Haeckel introduced another kingdom, protist, for all unicellular organisms. In 1937, the French biologist Edouard Chatton divided into two "empires" - Prokaryota and Eukaryota, based on more detailed observations of cells in plants, animals and bacteria. It turned out that plants and animals had basic similarities in complexityTheir cells and in the presence of cellular cores, while bacteria lack both nuclei and organelles (intracellular structures).
Several other main updates followed in the 50th, 60s and 70 years, which were a time of rapid progress in biology. Herbert Copeland updated the system to four kingdoms in 1956, renamed Prokaryota to Monera and divided Eukaryota into three kingdoms: Protista, Plantae and Animal. Another change came in 1969, when Robert Whittaker divided the protisto into mushrooms and protista and for the first time worked in Fungi's own classification of the highest level.
In 1977 Carl Woees and his collaborators introduced the most crowded system of the highest level with six kingdoms: eubacteria, archebacteria, protista, mushrooms, plantae and animal. Then, in 1990, the system was mercifully simplified by Woe, decreased to three domains: bacteria, archaea and eukarya. The latter is the current classification system of the highest level.