What is hierarchy of categories ? Describe the same.

Hierarchy Categories were introduced by Linnaeus. They are also known as Linnaean hierarchy. The meaning of hierarchy is the arrangement of the categories in an increasing order from species to kingdom or in a decreasing order from kingdom to species.

Nearer the categories in hierarchy, the greater is the similarity between their organisms.

Hierarchy can be classified in two ways:

● Obligate hierarchy- Where order is followed strictly from kingdom to species.

● Intermediate hierarchy- It does not follow the order and can be added to the categories in the obligate list like subdivision, subspecies, superfamily, suborder and super class.

Kingdom is the highest rank while species is the lowest rank in the Hierarchy. The hierarchy of major categories is given below:

Kingdom-All animals belonging to various phyla are assigned to the highest category called Kingdom.

Phylum (for animals) / Division (for plants)- Different classes having few common characteristics are placed in a single phylum.

Class- It includes organisms of releated order.

Order-Order is an assemblage of familes resembling one another in a few characters.

Family – Group of related genera are included in a family. More similar genus groups are placed together in a single family.

Genus - Genus comprises a group of related species which has more characters in common in comparison to species of other genera.

Species. It is lowest taxonomic category. Species is a group of fundamentally similar and potentially interbreeding populations that are reproductively isolated from other groups due to morphological features.