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The names of taxa at taxonomic ranks above genus (or the rarely used supergenus) – family, order, etc. – are always capitalized and are not italicized for animals, plants or bacteria (i.e., everything but viruses): bats belong to the order Chiroptera; rats and mice are members of the family Muridae and the order Rodentia; the house mouse ...
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. For example, the zoological name for the human species is Homo sapiens. This is usually italicized in print or underlined ...
In a classification system based on ranks, there are also ways of naming ranks above the level of genus and below the level of species. Ranks above genus (e.g., family, order, class) receive one-part names, which are conventionally not written in italics. Thus, the house sparrow, Passer domesticus, belongs to the family Passeridae. Family names ...
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".
The type genus for a family-group name is simply the genus that provided the stem to which was added the ending "-idae" (for families). Example: The family name Spheniscidae has as its type genus the genus Spheniscus Brisson, 1760. The type species for a genus-group name is more complicated and follows exactly defined provisions in articles 67 ...
Virus classification is the process of naming viruses and placing them into a taxonomic system similar to the classification systems used for cellular organisms. Viruses are classified by phenotypic characteristics, such as morphology , nucleic acid type, mode of replication, host organisms , and the type of disease they cause.
Species (and subspecies) epithets are never capitalized, always italicized, and always preceded by either the genus name or a one-letter abbreviation of it: Homo ergaster or H. ergaster; Varecia variegata or V. variegata. The genus abbreviation is used only when the full genus name has been mentioned at least once earlier in the article, and ...
The main ranks are kingdom (regnum), phylum or division (divisio), class (classis), order (ordo), family (familia), genus and species. The ranks of section and series are also used in botany for groups within genera, while section is used in zoology for a division of an order.