1. Organizing Life’s Diversity

2.  It is easier to understand living things if they are organized into different categories

3.  Aristotle: developed the earliest classification system  2 divisions were developed Plants Animals  Aristotle lumped everything into these two categories, if he could not place an organism in one of these categories, he considered it NONLIVING

4.  Carolus Linnaeus – a Swedish botanist who developed the two word naming system called binomial nomenclature based on genetic and physical similarities

5.  To classify organisms today, scientists observe:  Genetic similarities (similarities in DNA and RNA)  Evolutionary relationships  Physical characteristics  Classification may be used to study relationships between different and similar species  May also give insight in developing cheaper medicines, pesticides, herbicides, etc.

6.  Taxa (plural) or taxon (singular) – the division of classification  The 8 taxonomic rankings  Domain  Kingdom (6 possible)  Phylum  Class  Order  Family  Genus  Species

7.  Eubacteria  Archaebacteria  Protista  Fungi  Plantae  Animalia

8.  Modern day naming system  Written in latin  In italics when typed, underlined when handwritten  2 words in the names  1 st word is the genus name  2 nd word is descriptive  1 st word is capitalized, 2 nd word lower case  Example: Homo sapien (“wise human”)