kingdoms

Carolus Linnaeus, a Swedish scientist, developed a way of naming organisms. He gave each living thing a scientific name based on its classification. This way he could divide the kingdoms, the largest group used to classify living things, into smaller groups. Each kingdom is divided into two or more phyla. All members of a phylum share at least one important structure or other characteristic. Each phylum is divided into smaller groups called classes. Members of a class that have the most common are put into smaller groups called orders. The most similar members of an order are grouped into a family. The most similar family members are grouped into a genus. The most similar members of genus belong to a species.