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6 The 5 Kingdoms of There are millions of living organisms on Earth... and humans, in their sense of wonder, have tried for centuries to see some order in the chaos of these multitudes. The early Greeks tried to classify all inanimate objects as fire, air, earth, and water, and the Greek philosopher Aristotle further classified living The efforts classify living things as eitherto Plant or Animal. Hethings groupedsaw animals into Land Dwellers, Water andin Airthe Dwellers. didn't work very well, as this system greatDwellers, progress work This of Carl grouped elephants andbook earthworms, whales and water striders, flies and Linnaeus, whose Systema falcons. These things aren't alike! Naturae ("The Natural Classification", Botanists later tried to classifyconcept living creatures based on his religious that by means of locomotion, grouping butterflies and bats (flying), barnacles and barley (both rooted in you could understand God by studying place). This system of classification didn't work out very well, either (bats nature, his creation), was published inso other attempts were and butterflies are pretty different, aren't they?), made. 1735. While some of his concepts have been significantly changed, we still keep much of his ideas (hierarchical classification and system of binomial nomenclature). Let's pretend we are young botanists like Carl Linneaus and see how we might classify living things that we know at Cazadero. p n l t a s a This process is called photosynthesis, n and may be one of the most important l chemical reactions on the face of thei earth. s m a The most obvious grouping is into two groups, plants and animals This system works well until... This classification works rather well, and for many years we were all taught about the Plant Kingdom and the Animal Kingdom in school. Plants, such as redwood trees, are characterized not by the fact that they don't run around, but by the fact that they all make their own food out of sunshine, water, and carbon dioxide, by means of chlorophyll (the stuff that makes plants green). Animals, on the other hand, either eat plants (such as deer) or they eat other animals that do eat plants (such as mountain lions who eat the deer). This classification system works pretty well, and we still talk about deer as being members of the Animal Kingdom and redwood trees as being members of the Plant Kingdom. ...until you try to classify a mushroom! Hmmm. Let's see. It's not green. Scientists tell us it So we needit to add Fungi Kingdom that's because does notthe contain chlorophyll. It to the make PlantitsKingdom and the be Animal doesn't own food, so it can't a plant. We learned that all plants their own food. Kingdom. Now wemake have three kingdoms. But it doesn't eat, either: mushrooms don't have mouths! So it can't be an animal, because we learned that all animals eat food. So how do mushrooms get their nourishment? Mushrooms are a type of fungus, and all fungi (the plural of "fungus") neither make food nor eat it: they absorb it. This system works well until... Almost all of the body of a mushroom is actually underground, made up of tiny little strings of cells called hyphae. They are so tiny that they are only 1/50th the diameter of a human hair! How's that for small? The hyphae grow out until they run into something that the fungus thinks is tasty, and the hyphae grow into the food (mostly dead plant and animal matter) and absorb its nutrients directly into its own cells. ...until you try to classify bacteria! Actually, bacteria are found everywhere but you can't see them anywhere because they are so small. Millions of them are in a single drop of water. So we need to add the Monera Kingdom Bacteria are very different from plants, animals, and and now we have four kingdoms. fungi, and not just because of size. All of the other living things (plants, animals, fungi) are made up of thousands, or billions, or even eleventeen gazillions, of cells, and each of their cells has a nucleus (the scientists call this "eukaryotic"), a central command center that tells the cell what to do. Bacteria are always made up of just one cell, and their cell has no nucleus (the scientists call this "prokaryotic"). Bacteria are actually more different from plants and animals than a mouse is from an elephant! They really need to be in their very own kingdom, the Kingdom Monera ("monera" comes from the Greek word for "single", referring to the fact that these organisms are all single-celled.) This system works well until... High-powered microscopic views of bacteria (artificially colored) ...until you try to classify slime! Wherethe doKingdom you stick slime? Algae need their own kingdom, Prostista. This group is also the Paramecium, a protist swims around in (I mean, after you scrape it offthe the bottom ofthat your shoe!) home of other organisms that don't fit into other kingdoms, including singlewaterand multi-cellular organisms like celled organisms like paramecia andpond diatoms, So we giant added Protist and on the the tree of life doKingdom you place slime, kelp (which are just Where algae). or more called algae? now we have five properly kingdoms. It is not an animal, because it does not eat things. It is not a plant, either, because it does not develop as a seed or spore within the mother plant. It is not a fungus, because it is green, and has chlorophyll, and can make its own food. And it is not a bacteria, because is has a cell nucleus. What is it? Volvox, a single-celled algae from a pond This system works well until... So we need to add the Kingdom Prostista to Plant Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, Fungi Kingdom, and Kingdom Monera. This five kingdom classification of living organisms is a good scheme with which to look and and learn about the wonderful world Diatom, a single-celled protist that floats in water we live in. and comes in the most bizarre shapes Scientists began to research the Monera (bacteria) Kingdom further. They discovered that there were two distinctly different kind of bacteria and so the Monera Kingdom was split into two separate kingdoms: Archaebacteria and Eubacteria Archaebacteria are those that live in extreme environments like the ocean floor, and even your intestines! Eubacteria have a different chemical makeup than archaebacteria and are often helpful, like those found in yogurt. So, there you have it. The six kingdoms of life. Let’s Review… The 6 Kingdoms of Animals Fungi Plants Protists Archaebacteria Eubacteria The Kingdoms of Life can be diagrammed, with their relationships to each other and to the presumed origin of life: