Science of naming, defining and classifying organisms

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Taxonomy (biology)</span>

Taxonomy (biology)

In biology, taxonomy  'arrangement', and  -νομία  'method') is the scientific study of naming, defining and classifying groups of biological organisms based on shared characteristics. Organisms are grouped into taxa and these groups are given a taxonomic rank; groups of a given rank can be aggregated to form a more inclusive group of higher rank, thus creating a taxonomic hierarchy. The principal ranks in modern use are domain, kingdom, phylum , class, order, family, genus, and species. The Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus is regarded as the founder of the current system of taxonomy, as he developed a ranked system known as Linnaean taxonomy for categorizing organisms and binomial nomenclature for naming organisms. 