Taxonomy 8th Grade Science
Engage How do you organize your clothes in your room? What else do we organize? Supermarket aisles Libraries Classes Teams/sports Members of a family Roads Cities Money
Explore Shoe Classification
Explain Brainpop
What is Taxonomy? Taxonomy is the study of grouping and naming living things. Scientists organize things so that they can examine relationships between various organisms, especially when they find new or old organisms Examples: Find a new species Find old fossils Taxonomy also gives every species a name based on a standard method so scientists from different countries can talk about the same animal without confusion
How does it work? There are 6 broad kingdoms Every living thing that we know of fits into one of the six kingdoms Each level gets more specific as fewer organisms fit into any one group
The modern system of classification has 8 levels: Order Family Genus Species Domain Kingdom Phylum Class
Helpful way to remember the 8 levels Dumb kids playing catch on freeways get squashed Or…make up your own… D K P C O F G S
Classification of Living Things
Phylum – Body Structures
Class
After class we have order The orders within the class Mammalia are described in the following pictures Lets follow the carnivora order
After order we have Family There are many different types of animals within the family. All with unique characteristics. Lets follow the canis family
After Family we have Genus All of these animals belong to the family canius. Because of this we have to specify them into genus and species. To classify the Grey Wolf we follow
Genus… A genus consists of a group of closely related species Other animals in the Canis group include dogs and coyotes The genus name is always Capitalized
Lastly….Species (Very specific)
Species... A species consists of animals that can mate and produce fertile offspring Only grey wolves are known as lupus. The species name is always lowercase
An organism is known by two names… Canis lupus is the scientific name for a gray wolf. Scientific names of organisms are always italicized Canis is the genus name lupus is the species name This system uses a binomial nomenclature
Binomial Nomenclature Bi means two Nomen means name A binomial nomenclature is a classification system using two names to identify an organism
Elaborate: The Dichotomous Key A key is a device for easily and quickly identifying an unknown organism. The dichotomous key is the most widely used type in biological sciences. The user is presented with a sequence of choices between two statements, couplets, based on characteristics of the organism. By always making the correct choice, the name of the organism will be revealed.