Chapter 1 Characteristics and classification of living organisms .
How Organisms are Classified
•There are millions of species of organisms on Earth
•A species is defined as a group of organisms that can reproduce to produce fertile
offspring
•These species can be classified into groups by the features that they share e.g. all
mammals have bodies covered in hair, feed young from mammary glands and have
external ears (pinnas)
The Binomial System
•Organisms were first classified by a Swedish naturalist called Linnaeus in a way that allows the
subdivision of living organisms into smaller and more specialised groups
•The species in these groups have more and more features in common the more subdivided they
get.
•He named organisms in Latin using the binomial system where the scientific name of an
organism is made up of two parts starting with the genus (always given a capital letter) and
followed by the species (starting with a lower case letter)
•When typed binomial names are always in italics (which indicates they are Latin) e.g. Homo
sapiens
•The sequence of classification is: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species
Dichotomous Keys
•Keys are used to identify organisms based on a series of questions
about their features
•Dichotomous means ‘branching into two’ and it leads the user through
to the name of the organism by giving two descriptions at a time and
asking them to choose
•Each choice leads the user onto another two descriptions
•In order to successfully navigate a key, you need to pick a single
organism to start with and follow the statements from the
beginning until you find the name
•You then pick another organism and start at the beginning of the key
again, repeating until all organisms are named
The Five Kingdoms
•The first division of living things in the classification system is to put them into one of five
kingdoms. They are:
• Animals
• Plants
• Fungi
• Protoctists
• Prokaryotes
•Main features of all animals:
• they are multicellular
• their cells contain a nucleus but no cell walls or chloroplasts
• they feed on organic substances made by other living things
• Several main features are used to place organisms into groups within the animal kingdom Vertebrates
• All vertebrates have a backbone
• There are 5 classes of vertebrates
Invertebrates
•Invertebrates do not possess a backbone
•One of the morphological characteristics used to classify invertebrates
is whether they have legs or not
•All invertebrates with jointed legs are part of the phylum Arthropods
•Arthropods share same characteristics
1. They have several pairs of jointed legs
2. They have an exoskeleton
Exoskeleton – is on the outside part of the body and the function of it are
a) Supports arthropods bodies
b) Allows animals to live on land without drying out
•They are classified further into the following classes:
The fungus Kingdom
•Main features of all fungi (e.g. moulds, mushrooms, yeast)
• usually multicellular, but same such as yeast are unicellular ( single- cell)
• cells have nuclei and cell walls not made from cellulose
• They do not have chlorophyll
• do not photosynthesize
• feed by digesting waste organic material and absorbing it into the cell so they are called
decoposers or they can feed by saprophytic (on dead or decaying material) or
parasitic (on live material) nutrition
• Reproduce by forming spores
• Their body is composed by hyphae that are microscopic threads made of cells linked in
long line.
• They are useful because
1. We eat them
2. Use to make ethanol and bread ( yeast )
3. Obtain antibiotic such as penicillin
• The can cause disease or decay
