For example, after the common beginning of all life, scientists divide organisms into three large categories called a domain: Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya. Within each domain is a second category called a kingdom.
Learning Outcomes. Relate the taxonomic classification system and binomial nomenclature. Taxonomy (which literally means “arrangement law”) is the science of classifying organisms to construct internationally shared classification systems with each organism placed into more and more inclusive groupings. Think about how a grocery store is organized.
Subspecies are members of the same species that are capable of mating and reproducing viable offspring, but they are considered separate subspecies due to geographic or behavioral isolation or other factors. Figure 2 shows how the levels move toward specificity with other organisms.
Dogs and wolves are the same species because they can breed and produce viable offspring, but they are different enough to be classified as different subspecies. (credit “plant”: modification of work by “berduchwal”/Flickr; credit “insect”: modification of work by Jon Sullivan; credit “fish”: modification of work by Christian Mehlführer; credit “rabbit”: modification of work by Aidan Wojtas; credit “cat”: modification of work by Jonathan Lidbeck; credit “fox”: modification of work by Kevin Bacher, NPS; credit “jackal”: modification of work by Thomas A. Hermann, NBII, USGS; credit “wolf”: modification of work by Robert Dewar; credit “dog”: modification of work by “digital_image_fan”/Flickr)
The common dog, Canis lupus familiaris, is a subspecies of Canis lupus, which also includes the wolf and dingo. (credit “dog”: modification of work by Janneke Vreugdenhil) The kingdom Animalia stems from the Eukarya domain. For the common dog, the classification levels would be as shown in Figure 1. Therefore, the full name of an organism ...
Therefore, the scientific name of the dog is Canis lupus. The name at each level is also called a taxon. In other words, dogs are in order Carnivora.
In other words, dogs are in order Carnivora. Carnivora is the name of the taxon at the order level; Canidae is the taxon at the family level, and so forth. Organisms also have a common name that people typically use, in this case, dog.