This document discusses Robert Whittaker's five kingdom classification system. It introduces the five kingdoms - Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Protista, and Monera. It then discusses the category levels of diversity from species to kingdom. Finally, it outlines some of the drawbacks of the older two kingdom classification system of just Animalia and Plantae.
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Introduction
Millions of living things inhabit our planet, they are divided into five
kingdoms: Animal, Plant, Fungi, Protist and Monera.
Robert Harding Whittaker was an American plant ecologist, He was
the first to propose the five kingdom taxonomic classification of the
world's biota into the Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Protista, and Monera in
1969.
ROBERT HARDING WHITTAKER
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Species
Species means an organism of a particular kind whose
members can interbreed among themselves to produce
fertile young ones. All individuals of a species can
normally breed among themselves. Individuals of a
particular species differ from all other living beings.
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Genus
Similar species constitute the next higher category of
genus. Genus, plural genera, is the biological classification
ranking between family and species, consisting of
structurally or phylogenetically related species or a single
isolated species exhibiting unusual differentiation
(monotypic genus).
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Family
Family (Latin: Familia, Plural: Familiae) is one of the eight major
hierarchical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy. A group of
genera with certain common characteristics form a family. It is
classified between order and genus. A family may be divided into
subfamilies, which are intermediate ranks between the ranks of
family and genus. A family is the collection of similar genera.
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Order
Order is a taxonomic rank used in classifying organisms, generally below the
class, and comprised of families sharing a set of similar nature or character. It is
a succession or sequence, usually arranged in a series. Order is a group of
related families. One example of order is, “Carnivora”.
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Class
A class is the taxonomic rank in the scientific classification
of organisms in biology below phylum and above order.
For example, Mammalia is the class used in the
classification of dogs, whose phylum is Chordata (animals
with notochords) and order is Carnivora (mammals that
eat meat).
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Kingdom
The kingdom is he largest division of human being. When Carl Linnaeus
introduced the rank-based system of nomenclature into biology in 1735, the
highest rank was given the name "kingdom" and was followed by four other
main ranks: class, order, genus and species. Later two further main ranks
were introduced, making the sequence kingdom, phylum, class, order,
family, genus and species. In 1990, the rank of domain was introduced
above kingdom.
So the five kingdoms under the recent scheme of classification are 1.
Monera 2. Protista 3.Fungi 4.Plantae and 5.Animalia
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Binomial Nomenclature
Binomial Nomenclature was given by Carolus Linnaeus (1707 - 1778). In
this system, each name has two components - generic name and
specific epithet. For example, binomial name for Mango is Mangifera
Indica where 'Mangifera' denotes generic name ( genus ) and 'indica'
represents specific epithet ( species ). This method of naming the
organisms is called Binomial Nomenclature.
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Drawbacks
According to the old classification the world of organisms was divided in
two groups : Plantae and Animalia. This scheme had several drawbacks :
Bacteria cannot be called plants because they are prokaryotic
organisms, and some possess flagella to help them move.
Some single celled organisms such as Euglena cannot be exclusively
called plant or animal as they have chloroplasts like plants and, cell-
mouth to feed like animals
Fungi are also not plants as they neither have chlorophyll nor roots,
stem or leaves.