Classification of organisms

The living world is highly diversified and if the organisms were not systematically classified, it would be very difficult to study them. The classification of organisms is called biological classification or taxonomy. There are two main functions:

1. To recognize a living organism and to study its life history.
2. To identify and classify a particular organism of a particular group based on the characters exhibited by it.

There are basically 5 vast groups or kingdoms namely:

1. Kingdom Monera - Prokaryotes (Organisms without a clear nucleus)
2. Kingdom Protista - Unicellular eukaryotes (Single celled cells with a nucleus)
3. Kingdom Plantae -Multicellular plants
4. Kingdom Fungi - Saprophytic and parasitic fungi.
5. Kingdom Animalia - Multicellular animals.

The organisms are classified into many sub-groups under a kingdom as the table indicates.This is the complete classification of a human.

Carolus Linnaeus introduced the binomial nomenclature for all living organisms. Each organism has two names in which the first refers to the genus and the second refers to the species to which it belongs. The former always starts with a capital letter and the latter with a small letter.

e.g Australopithecus robustus