Kingdom (biology)

Kingdom is the highest rank, after the domain, which is normally used in the biological taxonomy of all organisms. Each kingdom is split into phyla.

There are 5 kingdoms in taxonomy. Every living thing comes under one of these 5 kingdoms and some symbionts, such as lichen, come under two. They are:

• Monera or Prokaryotes – the most simple living things: bacteria and archaea
• Protista – eukaryotes with only one cell
• Fungi – mushrooms, moulds and other fungi
• Plantae – all plants, such as moss, trees and grass
• Animalia – all animals, including people. See List of animal phyla

Summary

Linnaeus 1735 2 kingdoms	Haeckel 1866 3 kingdoms	Chatton 1937 2 empires	Copeland 1956 4 kingdoms	Whittaker 1969 5 kingdoms	Woese et al. 1977 6 kingdoms	Woese et al. 1990 3 domains
(not treated)	Protista	Prokaryota	Monera	Monera	Eubacteria	Bacteria
					Archaebacteria	Archaea
		Eukaryota	Protoctista	Protista	Protista	Eukarya
Vegetabilia	Plantae			Fungi	Fungi
			Plantae	Plantae	Plantae
Animalia	Animalia		Animalia	Animalia	Animalia

Sometimes entries in the table, which are next to each other, do not match perfectly. For example, Haeckel placed the red algae (Haeckel's Florideae; modern Rhodophyta) and blue-green algae (Haeckel's Archephyta; modern Cyanobacteria) in his Plantae, but in modern classifications they are considered protists and bacteria respectively. However, despite this and other failures of equivalence, the table gives a useful simplification.