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Order ( la, ordo) is one of the eight major hierarchical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy. It is classified between family and class. In
biological classification In biology, taxonomy () is the scientific study of naming, defining ( circumscribing) and classifying groups of biological organisms based on shared characteristics. Organisms are grouped into taxa (singular: taxon) and these groups are given ...
, the order is a
taxonomic rank In biological classification, taxonomic rank is the relative level of a group of organisms (a taxon) in an ancestral or hereditary hierarchy. A common system consists of species, genus, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom, domain. While o ...
used in the classification of organisms and recognized by the nomenclature codes. An immediately higher rank, superorder, is sometimes added directly above order, with suborder directly beneath order. An order can also be defined as a group of related families. What does and does not belong to each order is determined by a
taxonomist In biology, taxonomy () is the scientific study of naming, defining ( circumscribing) and classifying groups of biological organisms based on shared characteristics. Organisms are grouped into taxa (singular: taxon) and these groups are given ...
, as is whether a particular order should be recognized at all. Often there is no exact agreement, with different taxonomists each taking a different position. There are no hard rules that a taxonomist needs to follow in describing or recognizing an order. Some taxa are accepted almost universally, while others are recognized only rarely. The name of an order is usually written with a capital letter. For some groups of organisms, their orders may follow consistent naming schemes. Orders of
plant Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclude ...
s, fungi, and algae use the suffix (e.g.
Dictyotales Dictyotales is a large order in the brown algae (class Phaeophyceae). Members of this order generally prefer warmer waters than other brown algae. One genus in this order is calcareous, '' Padina'', the only calcareous member of this phylum. ...
). Orders of birds and
fish Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of liv ...
es use the Latin suffix meaning 'having the form of' (e.g. Passeriformes), but orders of
mammal Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fur or ...
s and
invertebrate Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate ...
s are not so consistent (e.g. Artiodactyla,
Actiniaria Sea anemones are a group of predatory marine invertebrates of the order Actiniaria. Because of their colourful appearance, they are named after the ''Anemone'', a terrestrial flowering plant. Sea anemones are classified in the phylum Cnidaria, ...
, Primates).


Hierarchy of ranks


Zoology

For some clades covered by the
International Code of Zoological Nomenclature The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) is a widely accepted convention in zoology that rules the formal scientific naming of organisms treated as animals. It is also informally known as the ICZN Code, for its publisher, the ...
, several additional classifications are sometimes used, although not all of these are officially recognized. In their 1997 classification of mammals, McKenna and Bell used two extra levels between superorder and order: ''grandorder'' and ''mirorder''. Michael Novacek (1986) inserted them at the same position.
Michael Benton Michael James Benton One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: (born 8 April 1956) is a British palaeontologist, and professor of vertebrate palaeontology in the School of Earth Sciences ...
(2005) inserted them between superorder and magnorder instead. This position was adopted by ''Systema Naturae 2000'' and others.


Botany

In botany, the ranks of subclass and suborder are secondary ranks pre-defined as respectively above and below the rank of order. Any number of further ranks can be used as long as they are clearly defined. The superorder rank is commonly used, with the ending that was initiated by
Armen Takhtajan Armen Leonovich Takhtajan or Takhtajian ( hy, Արմեն Լևոնի Թախտաջյան; russian: Армен Леонович Тахтаджян; surname also transliterated Takhtadjan, Takhtadzhi︠a︡n or Takhtadzhian, pronounced takh-tuh-JA ...
's publications from 1966 onwards.


History

The order as a distinct rank of biological classification having its own distinctive name (and not just called a ''higher genus'' ()) was first introduced by the German botanist Augustus Quirinus Rivinus in his classification of plants that appeared in a series of treatises in the 1690s. Carl Linnaeus was the first to apply it consistently to the division of all three kingdoms of nature (then minerals,
plant Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclude ...
s, and animals) in his ''
Systema Naturae ' (originally in Latin written ' with the ligature æ) is one of the major works of the Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) and introduced the Linnaean taxonomy. Although the system, now known as binomial nomen ...
'' (1735, 1st. Ed.).


Botany

For plants, Linnaeus' orders in the ''Systema Naturae'' and the ''
Species Plantarum ' ( Latin for "The Species of Plants") is a book by Carl Linnaeus, originally published in 1753, which lists every species of plant known at the time, classified into genera. It is the first work to consistently apply binomial names and was t ...
'' were strictly artificial, introduced to subdivide the artificial classes into more comprehensible smaller groups. When the word was first consistently used for natural units of plants, in 19th-century works such as the ''
Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis ''Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis'' (1824–1873), also known by its standard botanical abbreviation ''Prodr. (DC.)'', is a 17-volume treatise on botany initiated by Augustin Pyramus de Candolle. De Candolle intended it as a summa ...
'' of Augustin Pyramus de Candolle and the ''
Genera Plantarum ''Genera Plantarum'' is a publication of Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778). The first edition was issued in Leiden, 1737. The fifth edition served as a complementary volume to ''Species Plantarum'' (1753). Article 13 of the Internati ...
'' of Bentham & Hooker, it indicated taxa that are now given the rank of family. (See
ordo naturalis In botany, the phrase ''ordo naturalis'', 'natural order', was once used for what today is a family. Its origins lie with Carl Linnaeus who used the phrase when he referred to natural groups of plants in his lesser-known work, particularly '' Phil ...
, natural order'''.) In French botanical publications, from Michel Adanson's (1763) and until the end of the 19th century, the word (plural: ) was used as a French equivalent for this Latin . This equivalence was explicitly stated in the 's (1868), the precursor of the currently used ''
International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants The ''International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants'' (ICN) is the set of rules and recommendations dealing with the formal botanical names that are given to plants, fungi and a few other groups of organisms, all those "trad ...
''. In the first international ''Rules'' of botanical nomenclature from the International Botanical Congress of 1905, the word ''family'' () was assigned to the rank indicated by the French , while order () was reserved for a higher rank, for what in the 19th century had often been named a (plural ). Some of the plant families still retain the names of Linnaean "natural orders" or even the names of pre-Linnaean natural groups recognized by Linnaeus as orders in his natural classification (e.g. ''
Palmae The Arecaceae is a family of perennial flowering plants in the monocot order Arecales. Their growth form can be climbers, shrubs, tree-like and stemless plants, all commonly known as palms. Those having a tree-like form are called palm tree ...
'' or ''
Labiatae The Lamiaceae ( ) or Labiatae are a family of flowering plants commonly known as the mint, deadnettle or sage family. Many of the plants are aromatic in all parts and include widely used culinary herbs like basil, mint, rosemary, sage, savory ...
''). Such names are known as descriptive family names.


Zoology

In
zoology Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and dis ...
, the Linnaean orders were used more consistently. That is, the orders in the zoology part of the ''Systema Naturae'' refer to natural groups. Some of his ordinal names are still in use (e.g.
Lepidoptera Lepidoptera ( ) is an order of insects that includes butterflies and moths (both are called lepidopterans). About 180,000 species of the Lepidoptera are described, in 126 families and 46 superfamilies, 10 percent of the total described spec ...
for the order of moths and butterflies;
Diptera Flies are insects of the order Diptera, the name being derived from the Greek δι- ''di-'' "two", and πτερόν ''pteron'' "wing". Insects of this order use only a single pair of wings to fly, the hindwings having evolved into advanced ...
for the order of flies, mosquitoes, midges, and gnats).


Virology

In
virology Virology is the scientific study of biological viruses. It is a subfield of microbiology that focuses on their detection, structure, classification and evolution, their methods of infection and exploitation of host cells for reproduction, their ...
, the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses's
virus classification Virus classification is the process of naming viruses and placing them into a taxonomic system similar to the classification systems used for cellular organisms. Viruses are classified by phenotypic characteristics, such as morphology, nucleic ...
includes fifteen taxa to be applied for
viruses A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Since Dmitri Ivanovsky's ...
, viroids and satellite nucleic acids:
realm A realm is a community or territory over which a sovereign rules. The term is commonly used to describe a monarchical or dynastic state. A realm may also be a subdivision within an empire, if it has its own monarch, e.g. the German Empire. E ...
, subrealm,
kingdom Kingdom commonly refers to: * A monarchy ruled by a king or queen * Kingdom (biology), a category in biological taxonomy Kingdom may also refer to: Arts and media Television * ''Kingdom'' (British TV series), a 2007 British television drama ...
, subkingdom, phylum,
subphylum In zoological nomenclature, a subphylum is a taxonomic rank below the rank of phylum. The taxonomic rank of " subdivision" in fungi and plant taxonomy is equivalent to "subphylum" in zoological taxonomy. Some plant taxonomists have also used the ...
, class, subclass, order, suborder, family,
subfamily In biological classification, a subfamily ( Latin: ', plural ') is an auxiliary (intermediate) taxonomic rank, next below family but more inclusive than genus. Standard nomenclature rules end subfamily botanical names with "-oideae", and zoolo ...
, genus,
subgenus In biology, a subgenus (plural: subgenera) is a taxonomic rank directly below genus. In the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, a subgeneric name can be used independently or included in a species name, in parentheses, placed between ...
, and species. There are currently fourteen viral orders, each ending in the suffix .


See also

*
Biological classification In biology, taxonomy () is the scientific study of naming, defining ( circumscribing) and classifying groups of biological organisms based on shared characteristics. Organisms are grouped into taxa (singular: taxon) and these groups are given ...
* Cladistics * Phylogenetics *
Taxonomic rank In biological classification, taxonomic rank is the relative level of a group of organisms (a taxon) in an ancestral or hereditary hierarchy. A common system consists of species, genus, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom, domain. While o ...
*
Systematics Biological systematics is the study of the diversification of living forms, both past and present, and the relationships among living things through time. Relationships are visualized as evolutionary trees (synonyms: cladograms, phylogenetic tr ...
*
Taxonomy Taxonomy is the practice and science of categorization or classification. A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a scheme of classification, especially a hierarchical classification, in which things are organized into groups or types ...
*
Virus classification Virus classification is the process of naming viruses and placing them into a taxonomic system similar to the classification systems used for cellular organisms. Viruses are classified by phenotypic characteristics, such as morphology, nucleic ...


References


Works cited

* {{Authority control 01 Botanical nomenclature Plant taxonomy rank08 Bacterial nomenclature