CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FIVE KINGDOMS OF LIVING THINGSĪll the species in a particular kingdom have similar characteristics in terms of their growth and the way they function.
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In this way, the domain includes the kingdom, the kingdom the phylum, the phylum the class, and so on. They all follow a hierarchical order and are dependent on each other, so some divisions include others. This means that all the species that make up these five large groups - some recent theories split them further into six or even seven - have common ancestors and therefore share some of their genes and belong to the same family tree.Īs well as the kingdoms of living things there are other taxonomic categories within the same classification system such as, for instance, domain, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species. The system of biological kingdoms is the way in which science classifies living things according to their ancestry over the course of evolution. This initial observation by the Greek philosopher was expanded in the 19th and 20th centuries by the discovery of new kingdoms, finally arriving at today's widely-recognised five, which cover the 8.7 million species that live on Earth, according to estimates by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Nobody knows for certain when, how or why life began on Earth, but Aristotle observed 2,400 years ago that all the planet's biodiversity was of animal or plant origin.