How does scientist classify animals

For instance, he placed all monkeys and apes along with humans into the order Primates. His use of the word Primates from the Latin primus meaning "first" reflects the human centered world view of Western science during the 18th century. It implied that humans were "created" first. However, it also indicated that people are animals. Charles Darwin While the form of the Linnaean classification system remains substantially the same, the reasoning behind it has undergone considerable change.

For Linnaeus and his contemporaries, taxonomy served to rationally demonstrate the unchanging order inherent in Biblical c reation and was an end in itself. From this perspective, spending a life dedicated to precisely describing and naming organisms was a religious act because it was revealing the great complexity of life created by God. This static view of nature was overturned in science by the middle of the 19th century by a small number of radical naturalists, most notably Charles Darwin.

He provided conclusive evidence that evolution of life forms has occurred. In addition, he proposed natural selection as the mechanism responsible for these changes. Late in his life, Linnaeus also began to have some doubts about species being unchanging. Crossbreeding resulting in new varieties of plants suggested to him that life forms could change somewhat. However, he stopped short of accepting the evolution of one species into another. Why do we classify living things today?

Since Darwin's time, biological classification has come to be understood as reflecting evolutionary distances and relationships between organisms. The creatures of our time have had common ancestors in the past. In a very real sense, they are members of the same family tree. The great diversity of life is largely a result of branching evolution or adaptive radiation. This is the diversification of a species into different lines as they adapt to new ecological niches and ultimately evolve into distinct species.

Within the animal kingdom, major phyla include chordata animals with a backbone , arthropoda includes insects and mollusca molluscs such as snails. Phyla have also been developed and reorganised since the original work by Linnaeus — as scientists discover more species, more categories and subcategories are put in place.

Each phylum is then divided into classes. Classes within the chordata phylum include mammalia mammals , reptilia reptiles and osteichthyes fish , among others. The class will then be subdivided into an order. Within the class mammalia, examples of an order include cetacea including whales and dolphins , carnivora carnivores , primates monkeys, apes and humans and chiroptera bats.

From the order, the organism will be classified into a family. Within the order of primates, families include hominidae great apes and humans , cercopithecidae old world monkeys such as baboons and hylobatidae gibbons and lesser apes.

Finally, the classification will come to the genus plural genera and species. These are the names that are most commonly used to describe an organism. One outstanding feature of the Linnean classification system is that two names are generally sufficient to differentiate from one organism to the next.

An example within the primate family is the genus Homo for all human species for example, Homo sapiens or Pongo for the genus of orangutan for example, Pongo abelii for the Sumatran orangutan or Pongo pygmaeus for the Bornean orangutan. While this system of classification has existed for over years, it is constantly evolving. Classification in the s was based entirely on the morphological characteristics what something looks like of the organism.

Those that looked most alike were put closest together in each category. This can be depicted as a tree, with the diverging branches showing how different the species become as you move out from the kingdoms trunk.

Now, a radical shift in the grouping of organisms is occurring with the development of DNA technologies. The young take the form of larvae that change into adults during a non-feeding metamorphosis.

The first subclass consists of four orders, including, for example, bristletails and springs tails. The second subclass has 16 orders, including, for instance, dragonflies; crickets, grasshoppers and locusts; termites and sucking lice.

The third subclass has nine orders, comprising insects such as beetles; fleas; bees, wasps and ants; and the butterflies and moths. At the order level, the monarch belongs to butterflies and moths, called Lepidoptera, which rank high among the most intriguing and conspicuous insect orders in the Southwest. They have two pairs of membranous, scaled and often brightly colored wings. Typically they have large eyes, long antennae and a long sucking tube which the insect coils beneath its head when not feeding.

The larvae, or caterpillars, all have silk glands that they use for spinning their cocoons. Their order contains well over families. At the family level, the monarch is the star of the milkweed butterflies, called Danaidae, which are among the best known in our deserts as well as across the country. The milkweed butterflies usually have goldish wings trimmed in black, according to Donald J.

Borror and Richard E. Their caterpillars feed on milkweed leaves, which invest both larvae and adults with a bitter and toxic taste that discourages predators. At the genera level, the monarch is one of a mere handful of closely related species collectively called Dannaus. At the species level, the monarch is called plexippus. Its body is about one inch long. Its four wings are generally a field of yellow, orange or gold, with veins of black running through them. A band of black, thickest at the front, rings the wings, and the body is black as well.

This black band is usually speckled with white spots, larger at the front and smaller at the back. The monarch, the aristocrat of the butterfly and moth world, bears the scientific name of Dannaus plexippus. In summary, it fits into the Linnaeus classification scheme as follows:.

Those from our Southwestern states to the Northwest migrate to southern California. Those from the Midwest to the eastern seaboard migrate across the southern Chihuahuan Desert to the mountains of central Mexico, covering thousands of miles. Their journey is closely watched along the entire route. The vertebrate subkingdom of our deserts includes phyla comprising a surprisingly diversity of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and even fish.

The Southwest contributes even more to the diversity of birds. According to the USGS, the Colorado River drainage system is home to numerous species including various chubs, the Colorado squawfish, the razorback sucker and the bonytail. The Rio Grande system of the Colorado River drainage system is home to chubs, the silvery minnow and shiners. Desert springs serve as habitat for pupfishes, springfishes and poolfishes.