Classification of living organisms
Traditionally living things have been classified into groups depending on their structure and characteristics in a system developed by Carl Linnaeus.
Linnaeus classified living things into kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species. Organisms are named by the binomial system of genus and species.
Students should be able to use information given to show understanding of the Linnaean system.
Students should be able to describe the impact of developments in biology on classification systems.
As evidence of internal structures became more developed due to improvements in microscopes, and the understanding of biochemical processes progressed, new models of classification were proposed.
Due to evidence available from chemical analysis there is now a ‘three-domain system’ developed by Carl Woese. In this system organisms are divided into:
- archaea (primitive bacteria usually living in extreme environments)
- bacteria (true bacteria)
- eukaryota (which includes protists, fungi, plants and animals).
Evolutionary trees are a method used by scientists to show how they believe organisms are related. They use current classification data for living organisms and fossil data for extinct organisms.