Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A taxon is usually assigned a rank when it is given its formal name. The basic ranks are species and genus. When an organism is given a species name it is assigned to a genus, and the genus name is part of the species name. The species name is also called a binomial, that is, a two-term name.
A family may be divided into subfamilies, which are intermediate ranks between the ranks of family and genus. The official family names are Latin in origin; however, popular names are often used: for example, walnut trees and hickory trees belong to the family Juglandaceae, but that family is commonly referred to as the "walnut family".
Genus (/ ˈ dʒ iː n ə s /; pl.: genera / ˈ dʒ ɛ n ər ə /) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family as used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. [1] In binomial nomenclature, the genus name forms the first part of the binomial species name for each species within the genus.
The principal ranks in modern use are domain, kingdom, phylum (division is sometimes used in botany in place of phylum), class, order, family, genus, and species. The Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus is regarded as the founder of the current system of taxonomy, as he developed a ranked system known as Linnaean taxonomy for categorizing organisms ...
The hierarchy of biological classification's eight major taxonomic ranks. A genus contains one or more species. Minor intermediate ranks are not shown. A species (pl.: species) is a population of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. [1]
In the family Enterobacteriaceae of the class Gammaproteobacteria, the species in the genus Shigella (S. dysenteriae, S. flexneri, S. boydii, S. sonnei) from an evolutionary point of view are strains of the species Escherichia coli (polyphyletic), but due to genetic differences cause different medical conditions in the case of the pathogenic ...
This is not the case for binomial names, since the first part of a binomial is the name of the genus into which the species is placed. Above the rank of genus, binomial nomenclature and classification are partly independent; for example, a species retains its binomial name if it is moved from one family to another or from one order to another ...
A taxonomic unit, whether named or not: i.e. a population, or group of populations of organisms which are usually inferred to be phylogenetically related and which have characters in common which differentiate (q.v.) the unit (e.g. a geographic population, a genus, a family, an order) from other such units.