A Little Bit More
Taxonomy, the classification of organisms, is often regarded by students as boring and of little value. The widespread difficulty many have in determining whether an organism is an animal or not, however, seems to point to the need for a clearer understanding of the basics of this discipline. Although Linnaeus’s (lih-NAY-us) division of living things into two Kingdoms, plant and animal, served its purpose in the past, recent discoveries and examinations of a wide variety of microorganisms have shown that many organisms do not fit neatly into either kingdom. As the differences between animals and plants became less distinct, it was obvious that other kingdoms were necessary to categorize these organisms. Even today, not everyone agrees upon a single classification system as work goes on with people trying to better understand our living world.
Depending on your source, you may find this list of Kingdoms/organisms to be different than we’ve listed here.
Kingdoms – monera, protista, fungi, plant, animal
Biology online 2007
1. Kingdom Monera: This is the most primitive of the five kingdoms, it encompasses all the bacteria. monerans are single-celled prokaryotic organisms. kingdom monera is divided into:
a. Eubacteria → all bacteria apart from the archaebacteria.
b. Archaebacteria → single-celled organisms that live under extreme environmental conditions and have distinctive biochemical features.
2. Kingdom Protista: This kingdom is composed of single-celled (sometimes multicellular), eukaryotic organisms. protists are more complex than bacteria and include protozooans and some types of algae.
3. Kingdom Fungi: kingdom fungi includes organisms such as slime moulds, mushrooms, smuts, rusts, mildews, moulds, stinkhorns, puffballs, truffles and yeasts. All are classified in this kingdom because they absorb food in solution directly through their cell walls and reproduce through spores. none conduct photosynthesis.
4. Kingdom Plantae: The members of this kingdom are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms that (usually) conduct photosynthesis.
5. Kingdom Animalia: The members of this kingom are complex, multicellular, eukaryotic organisms that digest food outside their cells and then absorb the digested nutrients. Animals must consume other organisms to obtain most of their nutrients.
Activities
Science – Find It Yourself
Objectives: Understand that accessing online information can be difficult at times
Materials: Online access
I began looking for the current (Dec 2007) number of Kingdoms that biologists accept and found it varied. I think this would make a good exercise for students so they can understand that online access is not necessarily automatic access to correct, timely information. One has to be a bit more careful to ensure that the information is “correct”, or at least current.
Have your students (this probably won’t work well with young students) see if they can find out what the current (2007) general understanding of how many Kingdoms there are – not everyone agrees and it has varied over the years. See if students can find a recent “pronouncement” of the number that they can share with the class.
They should:
1. note the name of their source
2. note the date of their source
3. note the number of Kingdoms their source indicates
4. list the names of those Kingdoms
Good luck.
Key Concepts
Identification, Scientific Method/Approach
Questions
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