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Classification of Insects
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Classification is the way in which species are placed into
larger and larger groups or catetories that share similarities
and a common ancestry. For example, bees, wasps, and ants are
members of the insect order Hymenoptera. Hymenoptera includes
many families for the different kinds of bees, wasps, and
ants. The family that includes honey bees and bumblebees is
Apidae. Bumblebees are in the genus Bombus, and
honey bees are in the genus Apis. The genus Apis
includes several species, one of which is the honey bee,
Apis mellifera.
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The sequence of classification categories can be remembered by
memorizing this mnemonic phrase:
King Phillip,
Come Out
For Goodness
Sake!
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CATEGORY
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EXAMPLE OF honey bee
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Kingdom
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Animal
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Phylum
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Arthropoda
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Class
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Hexapoda
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Order
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Hymenoptera
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Family
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Apidae
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Genus
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Apis
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Species
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mellifera
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Kingdom
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Living organisms can be placed in four Kingdoms: Virus,
Bacteria, Plant, and Animal. The Animal Kingdom is divided
into Phyla (more than one phylum).
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Phylum
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There are more than 30 phyla in the Animal Kingdom. For
example, Phylum Annelida includes earthworms, and Phylum
Chordata includes humans, birds, fish, and all other animals
with a backbone.
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Phylum Arthropoda includes insects, spiders, lobsters, and
related animals. Arthropods have segmented bodies with the
segments grouped into two or three distinct sections. They
have hard external skeletons, or exoskeletons, that are
shed and regenerated as the animals grow.
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Class
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Phylum Arthropoda can be divided into 18 Classes, excluding
the extinct trilobites. The Class Arachnida includes spiders,
mites, scorpions, and related animals. The Class Hexapoda
(meaning "six-legged") includes the insects.
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Order
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The Class Arachnida includes 11 orders. Of these, Araneae includes the spiders.
Other orders related to Araneae include Scorpiones (scorpions),
Acari (mites, chiggers, and ticks), and Opiliones (harvestmen
and daddy longlegs).
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There are different opinions on the names and numbers of insect
orders. For example, some entomologists include Homoptera in
the Order Hemiptera, and others regard Homoptera to be a
separate order from Hemiptera. We recognize
30
orders of insects.
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Family
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Each order of insects includes one or more families. For
example, Order Zoraptera has only one family, but Order
Coleoptera includes 156 families. All families of insects are
spelled with "idae" at the end of their names.
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Genus
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Two or more species that share unique body structures or other
characteristics are considered to be closely related and are
placed together in a genus (genera is plural). Sometimes a
genus might include only a single species if there is nothing
else in the world that has similarities with it. The genus
is the first part of the scientific name of a species. For
the honey bee, Apis mellifera, Apis is the genus. The
genus is always spelled with a capital letter. In contrast
with family and order names, the genus is either
underlined Apis or printed in italics (Apis).
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Species
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A species can be defined as a group of individuals that breed
together to produce fertile offspring. Individuals of a
species cannot breed with other such groups. It is sometimes
possible for two different species to breed, but the
offspring will be sterile. A mule is the sterile offspring of
a donkey and a horse, and the mule can never mate and
reproduce itself.
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A species name is spelled with a lower case letter, and, like
the genus, it is also underlined or printed in italics. For
the honey bee, Apis mellifera, the specific name "
mellifera" is like an adjective that
modifies a noun, which is the genus Apis in this case.
The way we communicate with scientific names is different from
our usual language. If we had a cherry pie and an apple pie,
their "scientific" names would be
Pie cherrry and Pie apple.
Taxonomy Worksheet (Page 1)
Taxonomy Worksheet (Page 2)
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