SNAB TOPIC 3

A species is a group of similar individual organisms with similar appearance, biochemistry, physiology and genetics whose members are able to interbreed freely to produce fertile offspring

A habitat is a place where the organism lives

Biodiversity is the variety of life, the range of living organisms to be found

Classification is arranging organisms into groups based on similarities and differences in appearance.

Phylogeny is the study of the evolutionary history of groups of organisms

Taxonomy is the study of classification

 Taxonomic hierarchy of domain,

• Kingdom, 
• Phylum, 
• Class, 
• Order, 
• Family, 
• Genus,
• Species.

Organisms are sorted so that it helps to avoid confusion within scientists as they’re standard scientific names.

Kingdom

Example

Features

Prokaryote

Bacteria

Single cell, no nucleus, smaller than 5 micrometres

Protoctista

Algae

Eukaryotic, single celled or simple multicellular

Fungi

Mould, yeast, mushroom

Chitin cell wall, eukaryotic, saprotrophic

Plantae

Moss, fern, roses

Eukaryotic, multicellular, cellulose cell wal, autotrophic

Animalia

Mammals, reptiles, birds, fish, insects

Heterotrophic, eukaryotic, no cell wall, multicellular