Biodiversity, Species
and Classification
What is a species?
Organisms of the same species:
1. have more characteristics in common than they do with
organisms of a different species
2. can interbreed to produce fertile offspring.
Sometimes a species may have different kinds or breeds that show
great variation but the individuals still belong to the same species.
For example: Dogs
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Same Species or Not?
“ Same Species or Not?
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“ Same Species or Not?
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“ Same Species or Not?
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“ Same Species or Not?
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Biodiversity
Is all of the variety of species in the world…..
Since there is so much biodiversity in the world,
scientists have found a way to classify and organize
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Classification of Species
Classification is the method used by scientists to order living organisms. All species
have a unique classification that results in a binomial name.
Vertebrates are an example of
a classification group. Keys
can be used to help to identify
individual organisms.
Species with similar characteristics are put into groups, and this is called
classification.
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Domains
All of the organisms on earth can be classified into 3 different
domains. They are:
o Bacteria (Cyanobacteria, heterotrophic bacteria)
o Achaea ( The extremists – bacteria and other organisms that
live in earth’s most extreme conditions)
o Eukaryotes (protists, plants, animals, fungi, etc…)
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Kingdoms
The first official rank in this system is called a kingdom.
There are five kingdoms, based upon what an organism's cells
are like:
o Animalia (all multicellular animals)
o Plantae (all green plants)
o Fungi (moulds, mushrooms, yeast)
o Prokaryotae (bacteria, blue-green algae)
o Protoctista (Amoeba, Paramecium).
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Phylum
The second rank is called a phylum. All the members of a
phylum have a common ancestor and anatomical
similarities. There are many more phyla than there are
kingdom, so we will only focus on a few:
o Chordates (All the vertebrates and some invertebrate that
possess, a structure called a notochord)
o Arthropods (Are invertebrate animals that have an external,
jointed skeleton usually known as a carapace.)
o Molluscs (Are soft-bodied and most species today still possess
the ancestral shell – are invertebrates)
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Phylum
o Cnidaria (Includes jellyfish and corals.)
o Annelid (Are ringed worms or segmented worms.)
o Echinoderms (includes starfish, sea urchins and sea cucumbers.
They are radially symmetric marine creatures composed of
identical segments.)
o Brachiopods (Have hard "valves" (shells) on the upper and
lower surfaces.)
o Flowering Plants (Need the help of animals to transfer their
pollen from one plant to another.)
o Etc….
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Class
The third rank is called a class. There are many, many classes,
we will look at some of the classes that fall into the chordate group:
o Mammals (Characterized by warm-blood, hairy bodies, a
four-chambered heart, a single jaw bone, sweat glands)
o Birds (They are bipedal, warm-blooded, have a covering of feathers,
and their front limbs are modified into wings.)
o Amphibians (Has a larval stage in water and gills at some point in its
adult life)
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Class
o Chondrichthyes (Fish whose skeleton is composed of
cartilage.)
o Reptilia (They are cold-blooded, have dry scaly or horny skin
and a four-chambered heart.)
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Order
The fourth category is called an order. Some examples of the
orders in the mammalian class are:
o Rodents
o Carnivores
o Marsupials
o Primates
o Proboscidea (Have trunks and tusks)
o Cetacea (Aquatic mammals)
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Family
The 5th category is known as a family. A family is a scientific
grouping of closely related organisms. An example of the family
in which humans belong is called the great apes. The other great
apes are orangutans, gorillas, and chimpanzees.
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Genus
The 6th category is called genus. A genus is a
scientific way of showing that species are very
closed related to each other. For example the
canis genus has as its members jackals, wolves,
the coyote and the domestic dog.
●Homo is the genus that covers the extant
species Homo sapiens (modern humans), plus
several extinct species classified as ancestral to
or closely related to modern humans, most
notably Homo erectus.
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Species
Is the 7th and final category of classification. A species is a
group of organisms that can interbreed and produce healthy
offspring which can themselves breed.
● Wolves and dogs can produce fertile puppies, so they are
both the same species (Canis lupus), but mules are usually
sterile so horses and donkeys are different species.
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