classification and taxonomy are two areas of science where students usually struggle and that's only because it's a little different when you classify something you put it into a category based on similarities if you were in a group of people how could you be classified think about that you could be classified by your age by your gender perhaps your skin tone or hair color maybe your eye color are you left or right handed what about your hometown you're put into the group because you match others when you classify an organism always begin with a broad and general category the domain is the most general category out there everything would belong to a domain from the domain we have the kingdom there are five kingdoms from there we move down the list phylum class order family genus and species g species is the most specific category it should be noted you should know these in both directions general to specific and specific to general this is the classification of man i'll begin with domain eukarya kingdom animalia phylum core data class mammalia order primate family hemenidae genus homo and species homo sapiens you are not responsible for this classification you only need to know the category names themselves like order or family this slide shows you the inverted pyramid of classification the top category is the broad category and is the biggest and broadest as you move down the list the boxes get smaller and smaller getting more and more specific when you name an organism you're involving taxonomy bi means to and no meal means naming so binomial nomenclature is a naming process so that each organism has two names just like you have two names the last two categories of the previous slide involved the genus and the species the genus is the general name for any organism it is always capitalized and is either underlined or italicized the species is the specific name is always lower cased and is either underlined or italicized but you never use bold in this image you'll see a common insect that flies around in the summer they make very loud sounds what is this insect if you said be a cicada you would be correct some people call these locusts a locust is a grasshopper this is definitely not a grasshopper this is a list of scientific names the first is streptococcus pneumoniae it is the bacterium that causes pneumonia in humans a boa constrictor is both a scientific name and a common name gorilla gorilla is the scientific name of the gorilla and no i didn't make that one up homo sapiens is the scientific name for humans i'm only testing you on the humans scientific name and not the others those are just for example scientific names are universal they are worldwide and they eliminate confusion why is a universal name important wherever you go you are you my name is lance morris regardless of where i am on the globe shouldn't it be that way for every organism