Tuesday, 14 February 2012

Discuss how classification systems have undergone several changes over a period of time?


Aristotle was the first to use scientific basis for classification. He used morphological characters to differentiate plants and animals. Further, Aristotle classified Plants into trees, shrubs and herbs. He classified animals based on presence or absence of the red blood.
Later Linnaeus proposed two kingdoms, viz. Plant Kingdom and Animal Kingdom. This system became very popular because of its simplicity and was used for a long time by scientists. But as the knowledge about finer characteristics of living being increased, scientists started to find that there were some organisms which couldn’t fit either of the kingdoms.
A need was being felt to include more number of characteristics like mode of reproduction, evolutionary relationship, etc. to facilitate better categorization.
Thus the latest ‘Five Kingdom Classification’ evolved. Five kingdoms are as follows:
1. Monera.
2. Protista.
3. Fungi
4. Plantae.
5. Animalia

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