Taxonomist

tax·on·o·my  (tk-sn-m)

n. pl. tax·on·o·mies

1. The classification of organisms in an ordered system that indicates natural relationships.

2. The science, laws, or principles of classification; systematics.

3. Division into ordered groups or categories: "Scholars have been laboring to develop a taxonomy of young killers" Aric Press.

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[French taxonomie : Greek taxis, arrangement; see taxis + -nomie, method (from Greek -nomi; see -nomy).]

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tax·ono·mist n.

Taxonomy of Life

The taxonomic organization of species is hierarchical. Each species belongs to a genus, each genus belongs to a family, and so on through order, class, phylum, and kingdom. Associations within the hierarchy reflect evolutionary relationships, which are deduced typically from morphological and physiological similarities between species. So, for example, species in the same genus are more closely related and more alike than species that are in different genera within the same family. Carolus Linnaeus, an 18th-century Swedish botanist, devised the system of binomial nomenclature used for naming species. In this system, each species is given a two-part Latin name, formed by appending a specific epithet to the genus name. By convention, the genus name is capitalized, and both the genus name and specific epithet are italicized, for Canis familiaris or simply C. familiaris. Modern taxonomy recognizes five kingdoms, into which the estimated five million species of the world are divided. This table presents a familiar organism from each kingdom and the names of the taxonomic groups to which it belongs.

Common Name	Kingdom	Phylum*	Class	Order	Family	Genus	Species
Domesticated Dog	Animalia (animals)	Chordata	Mammalia	Carnivora	Canidae	Canis	C. familiaris
Sugar Maple	Plantae (plants)	Magnoliophyta	Rosidae	Sapindales	Aceraceae	Acer	A. saccharum
Bread Mold	Fungi (fungi)	Zygomycota	Zygomycetes	Mucoralis	Mucoraceae	Rhizopus	R. stolonifer
Tuberculosis Bacterium	Prokaryotae (bacteria)	Firmicutes	Actinobacteria	Actinomycetales	Mycobacteriaceae	Mycobacterium	M. tuberculosis
Pond Alga	Protoctista (algae, molds, protozoans)	Chlorophyta	Euconjugatae	Zygnematalis	Zygnemataceae	Spirogyra	S. crassa

* In botanical nomenclature, "division" is used instead of "phylum."

Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company

Thesaurus

Noun

1.

taxonomist - a biologist who specializes in the classification of organisms into groups on the basis of their structure and origin and behavior systematist, taxonomer biologist, life scientist - (biology) a scientist who studies living organisms lumper - a taxonomist who classifies organisms into large groups on the basis of major characteristics divider, splitter - a taxonomist who classifies organisms into many groups on the basis of relatively minor characteristics