Classifying Plants & Animals
S5L1 Students will classify organisms into groups and relate how they determined the groups with how and why scientists use classification.
a. Demonstrate how animals are sorted into groups (vertebrate and invertebrate) and how vertebrates are sorted into groups (fish, amphibian, reptile, bird, and mammal).
S5L1 Students will classify organisms into groups and relate how they determined the groups with how and why scientists use classification.
b. Demonstrate how plants are sorted into groups.
a. Demonstrate how animals are sorted into groups (vertebrate and invertebrate) and how vertebrates are sorted into groups (fish, amphibian, reptile, bird, and mammal).
S5L1 Students will classify organisms into groups and relate how they determined the groups with how and why scientists use classification.
b. Demonstrate how plants are sorted into groups.
Classifying PlantsScientists categorize plants in a variety of ways. You can visit the StudyJams links below to learn about the multitude of plant classifications.
More Info![]() Scientist that study living things or organims study millions of different species. Making a list this long could be very long and unorganized. As a result, scientist have created a way to classify these different species. When separating things into two groups, scientist use what is known as a dichotomous key (this means to divide into two groups). The classification system allows scientist to categorize these organisms based their similarities or how they are related to each other. The first area of classification is whether an organism is single celled or multicellular. There are six different kingdoms: plants, animals, protist, fungi, and bacteria is further separated into two kingdoms.
Earlier we discussed that both plants an animals are multicellular organisms. What makes plants unique is that they make their own food through the organelle chloroplast. When scientist sort plants, they fall into to primary categories. These categories are Vascular and Non Vascular. Vascular plants have tubelike tissues that disperse or transport water throughout the plant while Nonvascular plants do not have these tissues. As a result of the one difference, these plants develop very differently. Nonvascular plants pass water that they gather from cell to cell because they lack a water transport system. As a result these plants need to live by water and they do not grow very tall. On the other hand, vascular plants or just the opposite. They do not need to live by water and because of their water delivery system, they are able to grow tall and live in both wet and dry areas. Moreover, vascular plants and be divided into to subgroups: seedless and seed plants. The important difference here is how the plant reproduces or makes new plants. In regards to the seedless plants, ferns are an example of plant that do not have seeds. These plants reproduce by making spores (like seeds but only holds 1/2 of the new plant inside of it). The spores fall from ferns and germinate a different plant. The plants can be male or female, but the male plants must fertilize the female plant to produce a new fern. Other plants that produce seeds can be called gymnosperms. These plants do not make flowers, rather, the seed is in a berry or woody structure known as a cone. These gymnosperms can be broken into quads or four main groups called conifers, cycads, ginkgo, and gnetophytes. Since gymnosperms do not create flowers, what does? The answer to that question is angiospersms. These plants make flowers and well as seeds that are protected on the inside of fruits. Both gymnosperms and angiosperms produce pollen which bees transport from plant to plant, fertilizing the female plants. |
Classifying AnimalsWhen classifying animals, the first area of classification is typically determining between vertebrates and invertebrates. Vertebrates are animals that have a backbone/spine while invertebrates are animals that lack a backbone/spine. Animals can further be broken down into more specific groups such as warm blooded, cold blooded, fish, amphibians, reptiles, fish, birds, mammals and insects.
ADDITIONAL Resources
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