Family (biology)

In biology, a family is a taxonomic rank. Each family contains one or more genera. The next higher rank is that of order.

A hierarchy of important ranks

Usually, the name of the family ends with an "idae" for animals, and "aceae" for plants. Sometimes there are also subfamilies and superfamilies. Subfamilies end with "inae" or "oideae".

For example, walnuts (genus Juglans) and hickories (genus Carya) both belong to the walnut family (the Juglandaceae).