Classifying Organisms

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It forms the basis for Taxonomy in biological sciences, which is a science of identifying, grouping, and naming organisms according to their established natural relationship.

9. Classification of organism has facilitated science of genetic engineering to a great extent

Question 2. How would you choose between two characteristics to be used for developing a hierarchy in classification?

Answer : For developing a hierarchy of classification, we choose the fundamental characteristic among several other characteristics. These fundamental characteristics are independent of any other characteristics in their effects on the form and function of the organism. The characteristics in the next level would be dependent on the previous one and would decide the variety in the next level. In this way, we can build up a whole hierarchy of mutually related characteristics to be used for classification. For example, plants differ from animals in many ways such as body design, ...

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of the presence or absence of membrane-bound organelles, all living organisms are divided into two broad categories of eukaryotes and prokaryotes. This division lead to the formation of kingdom Monera, which includes all prokaryotes.

(ii) Then, eukaryotes are divided as unicellular and multicellular, on the basis of cellularity. Unicellular eukaryotes form kingdom Protista, and multicellular eukaryotes form kingdom Fungi, Plantae, and Animalia.

(iii) Animals are then separated on the basis of the absence of a cell wall.

(iv) Since fungi and plants both contain a cell wall, they are separated into different kingdoms on the basis of their modes of nutrition. Fungi have ...

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