Question

Which among the following is the correct Hierarchy of Classification of living organisms?
1. kingdom, phylum or division, order, class, family, genus, species.
2. kingdom, phylum or division, class, order, family, genus, species.
3. kingdom, phylum or division, family, order, class, genus, species.
4. kingdom, phylum or division, class, genus, family, order, species.
5. None of the above/More than one of the above

Answer 1

Correct Answer - Option 2 : kingdom, phylum or division, class, order, family, genus, species.

The correct answer is kingdom, phylum or division, class, order, family, genus, species.

• Biologists, such as Ernst Haeckel, Robert Whittaker, and Carl Woese tried to classify all living organisms into broad categories called kingdoms.
• Further classification is done by naming the sub-groups at various levels- kingdom, phylum or division, class, order, family, genus, species.
• This is also known as the Taxonomic hierarchy.
• Taxonomic hierarchy - It is the process of arranging various organisms into successive levels of the biological classification either in a decreasing or an increasing order from kingdom to species and vice versa.

• Kingdom - It is the highest level of classification. There are 5 kingdoms in which the living organisms are classified, namely, Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Protista, and Monera.
• Phylum - Organisms in a phylum share a set of characteristics that distinguishes them from organisms in another phylum. In botany, the term division has been used instead of the phylum.
• Class - Class was the most general rank in the taxonomic hierarchy until phyla were not introduced. Kingdom Animalia includes 108 classes.
• Order - It constitutes one or more than one similar families.
• Family - It includes various genera that share a few similarities.
• Genus - A group of similar species forms a genus.
• Species - It refers to a group of organisms that are similar in shape, form, reproductive features. There are about 8.7 million different species on earth.