Thursday, June 16, 2011

The Kingdoms of Life

"Wisdom reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and she orders all things well."  (Wisdom of Solomon 8:1)
God is ordered, and His Creation reflects this order.  Man has always sought to understand this order, and one of the ways we understand it is to classify it.  In seeking to find some order in the living world, scientists looked to classify all living things into KINGDOMS.  When man first began to classify living things, only two Kingdoms were used - PLANTS and ANIMALS.  (** HISTORY NOTE ** Aristotle classified animal species, Carol Linnaeus is responsible for our modern nomenclature, and classified living things into two kingdoms - plant and animal)

Read Chapter 4 in Biology: Inquiry Into Life as a background, recognizing that at the time of this writing (1961) scientists recognized only two kingdoms, plant and animal.

As man began to understand living things with more detail, further nuances and distinctions began to be understood, and thus the need for more Kingdoms became apparent so that living things could be more accurately classified.  There are now SIX KINGDOMS:

BACTERIA
ARCHAEA
PROTISTA
FUNGI
ANIMALIA
PLANTAE

Explore the Kingdoms of Life:
After exploring the Kingdoms of Life, please print this chart and research the named organisms in order to classify them.

1 comment:

  1. :) I finished all of them!!!

    And note to self.... the "Kingdoms of Life- A Webquest for High School Biology" doesn't work for some reason.

    Let me just say........ Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species!!!!!

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