A taxon (plural, taxa) is a group of organisms
that is assigned a particular name at some categorical rank. The categories
used in zoological taxonomy are Kingdom,
Phylum,
Class, Order, Family,
Genus, & Species, ranked in order from
most to least inclusive. [A time-honored mnemonic for KPCOFGS
is 'King Philip Came Over For Good Sex']. Any of the
categories may be modified by the prefixes Super- or Sub-,
which indicate more or less inclusive groups, respectively.
Familial names typically include a suffix that indicates that
rank within Orders: these are -oidea for a superfamily,
-idae for a family, and -inae for a subfamily.
Other category names sometimes used include Tribe (between
Family and Genus), for which the suffix is -ini.
Taxon-specific naming conventions includes the suffix -a
for Mammalian orders, -iformes for Bird families, and
substitution of Division for Phylum in botanical
taxonomy.
Assignment of
names for newly-discovered taxa, and resolution of conflicting
names, is done according to quasi-legal, formal rules in nomenclature, the science of
naming. For example, the genus names of harp seals and ivory
gulls are Pagophilus and Pagophila,
respectively, -us being a Latin masculine ending and -a
a feminine ending. Under the rules, taxa differing in gender
endings are permitted. The rules of nomenclature further require
that species names follow the genus names in Latin gender: seals
are Pagophilus groenlandicus and gulls Pagophila
eburnea. For the seals, this is true even though
they were originally given the masculine name of Phoca
groenlandica: the grammatical rule takes precedence over
the stability rule.
The network shows
the phylogenetic relationships (evolutionary history) of
some taxa of terrestrial animals in the Class Mammalia.
The animals shown are part of a single evolutionary lineage that
has been assigned the taxon name
Carnivora at the category rank of Order.
Within this order, various groups of animals have evolved,
including the cat-like superfamily Feloidea,
including small cats in the family Felidae,
and the superfamily of bear-, dog-, & weasel-like Canoidea, which are assigned the
family names Ursidae, Canidae, &Mustelidae, respectively. The
categorical rank of each of these groups as a family is
indicated by the -idae suffix.
Within Mustelidae, two lineages corresponding to weasels
and martens are recognized among others, which have been
assigned the genus names Mustela
and Martes,
respectively: names in capitalized italics indicate the genus category (plural, genera). Particular forms of
weasels and martens are the species (sing.,
species) Mustela erminea
and Martes americana. With no exceptions, the
invariant rule is that genus & species names are always
written in italics,
genus names are always capitalized,
and species names are always in lower-case.
After the first use in scientific writing, and (or) where it
will not be ambiguous, the genus name may be abbreviated, in
this case as M. erminea and M. americana. The
family Ursidae includes the extinct Cave Bear and Giant Panda.
Other taxonomic arrangements are possible. Dog- & cat-like carnivores may be placed either in separate superfamilies as above. Taxonomists who wish to emphasize differences or degree of relationship may place them in different suborders: Caniformia and Feliformia. [Note the suffix -iformia, similar to that used for bird orders, ending here in -a].
Like previous
classificatory systems, such as Linnaeus's Systema Naturae
(1758), the modern system is hierarchical, because each
level of category names is contained entirely within the next
more inclusive category. Unlike older systems, the system is natural
because the hierarchy of categorical names unambiguously
indicates the degree of evolutionary relationship among
organisms. For example, organisms placed in the same
genus are always more closely related to each other than those
in different genera in the same family, and organisms in the
same family are more closely related than those in different
orders. Ranking within more inclusive taxa reflects degree of
common ancestry. A natural classification allows instant
recognition of the current hypothesis of evolutionary
relationships among organisms.
It is important to realize that in phylogenetic taxonomy, the classification of creatures in any category is a hypothesis as to how its component taxa are related: new data or analysis may revise that hypothesis. For example, Linnaeus (1758) placed all true (eared) seals of the North Atlantic in the single genus Phoca. Subsequent molecular investigation divides these into several genera, in particular separating Harp Seals (Pagophilus) as only distantly related to Harbor Seals (Phoca).