taxonomy
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The book in which Linnaeus introduced his system
of classifying living things, first published in 1735
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The branch of science that classifies life into groups. Carolus Linnaeus
pioneered the grouping of organisms based on scientific names using Latin.
His system of giving an organism a scientific name of two parts, sometimes
more, is called binomial nomenclature, or "two-word naming." His scheme
was based on physical similarities and differences, referred to as characters.
Today, taxonomic classification is much more complex and takes into account
cellular types and organization, biochemical similarities, and genetic similarities.
Taxonomy is one aspect of a much larger field called systematics.
Related category
• CLASSIFICATION
IN BIOLOGY Source: National Center
for Biotechnology Information
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