Classical Taxonomy Vs. The Five Kingdom System

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Part A
On Earth there are estimated to be around 30 million different organisms. With this sheer volume of different life and the natural human instinct to know as much as possible, it is necessary for us to break up the huge amount of information into more convenient groups. Scientists take two different approaches to this the first is the classical taxonomy, also known as the five kingdom system and the second is new taxonomy or the three domain system. The five kingdom system has developed with time. Living organisms were first grouped according to how they moved, with plants in one kingdom and animals in a second, by Aristotle during the 4th Century BC. In 1700s Linnaeus developed the system of naming organisms, which we still use today, called binomial nomenclature; this system …show more content…

The five kingdom system is more organised than the domain system. In the domain system the two types of bacteria are divided and then everything else in the world is lumped together in a third domain. In the kingdom system things are divided logically according to their cell structure and appearance into five (or six) neat and tidy groups.
The kingdom system is better for understanding past mutations of an organism, because often mutations are just a reaction to a sudden change in environment. For example penguins are birds but, because of the extreme climate they live in they find no need for flying and instead their wings developed into flippers for swimming.
The domain system is superior when it comes to predicting future mutations, because it is easier to see subtle changes in DNA structures than to wait for it to have a more significant impact on the visible characteristics of an organism or its cell structure and make speculations on the final form the mutation will

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