Order (biology)

Dominion

Kingdom

Fill odivision

Class

Order

Family

Gender

Species

Primary taxonomic categories

In biology, the order is the taxonomic category between the class and the family. In zoology, it is one of the taxonomic categories of mandatory use, according to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. In ancient taxonomy it was synonymous with family.

What does and does not belong to each order is determined by a taxonomist, 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 strict rules that a taxonomist must follow to describe or recognize an order. Some taxa are almost universally accepted, while others are only rarely recognized.

Divisions

Between class and order, intermediate categories are used if the classification of a certain organism requires it; between order and family, various subdivisions can be used. The most used are:

• CLASE
  • Magnorden
    • Superorden, also receives the name of cohort.
      • Granorden
        • Mirorden
          • ORDEN
            • Suborden
              • Infraorden
                • Parvorden
                  • FAMILY

Nomenclature

In zoology, there is no obligation to assign a specific suffix, being the author who describes an order free to name it as he sees fit. However, there are certain tendencies when creating order names, depending on the zoological group in question; for example, insects, many of their orders (but not all) end in "-ptera" (wing), as Coleoptera or Lepidoptera; in fish and birds they end in "-formes", like Perciformes or Cypriniformes, Columbiformes or Galliformes, in bivalves they end in "-oida", like Veneroida or Ostreoida, etc.

In bacteria, fungi, algae, and plants it is obligatory to construct the order name from the genitive stem of the type genus name plus the suffix "-ales", such as Lactobacillales (from Lactobacillus), Agaricales (from Agaricus), Volvocales (from Volvox) and Pinales (from Pinus).

Hierarchy of ranks

Zoology

For some clades covered by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, several additional classifications are sometimes used, although not all of them are officially recognized.

In their 1997 classification of mammals, McKenna and Bell used two additional levels between superorder and order: grandorden and mirorden. Michael Novacek (1986) inserted them into the same position. Instead Michael Benton (2005) inserted them between superorder and magnorden. This position was adopted by Systema Naturae 2000 and others.

Botany

In botany, subclass and suborder ranks are pre-defined secondary ranks respectively above and below the order rank. Any number of additional ranks may be used as long as they are clearly defined.

The rank superorder is widely used, with the suffix "-anae" practice that was initiated by the publications of Armen Takhtajan from 1966.

History

The order as a distinct rank of biological classification that has its own distinctive name (and not just called a superior genus (genus summum)) 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 the three kingdoms of nature (then mineral, plant, and animal) in his Systema Naturae (1735, 1st ed.).

Botany

Cover of the 1758 edition Systema Naturæ Linnaeus.

For plants, Linnaeus's orders in the Systema Naturae and Species Plantarum were strictly artificial, introduced to subdivide the artificial classes into smaller, more understandable groups. When the word "ordo" it was first used consistently for the natural units of plants, in the 19th century it functions as the Prodrome of Candolle and the Genera Plantarum of Bentham and Hooker, indicated taxa now given family rank.

In French botanical publications, from Michel Adanson 's Familles naturelles des plantes (1763) and up to the end of the century XIX, the word famille: (plural familles was used) as a French equivalent for the English word ordo. This equivalence is indicated. explicitly in the Lois de la nomenclature botanique (1868) by Alphonse De Candolle, the forerunner of the one currently used in the International Code of Nomenclature of algae, fungi and plants.

In the first International Rules of Botanical Nomenclature of the International Botanical Congress of 1905, the word family was assigned to the rank indicated by the French famille while the order (ordo) was reserved for a higher rank, so that in the century XIX often referred to as cohors (plural cohorts).

Some of the plant families still retain the names of "natural orders" of Linnaeus or even the names of pre-Linnaean natural groups recognized by Linnaeus as orders in his natural classification (for example, Palmae or Labiatae). These names are known as descriptive surnames.

Zoology

In zoology, the orders of Linnaeus were used more consistently. That is, the orders in the zoology part of the Systema Naturae refer to natural groups. Some of the ordinal names for it are still in use (for example, Lepidoptera for the order of moths and butterflies; Diptera for the order of flies, mosquitoes, gnats, and midges).

Virology

In virology, the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses classification of viruses includes fifteen taxa that are applied in search of viruses, viroids and satellite nucleic acids: kingdom, subrealm, kingdom, subkingdom, phylum, subphylum, class, subclass, order, suborder, family, subfamily, genus, subgenus, and species. There are currently fourteen viral orders, each ending in the suffix -virales.