Kingdom (biology) - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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 to 7 kingdoms in taxonomy. Every living thing comes under one of these kingdoms and some symbionts, such as lichen, come under two. There are at least:

• Prokaryotes or Monera – the most simple living things: bacteria and archaea
• Protista – eukaryotes that are not plants, fungi, or animals
• 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
• Chromalveolata – plastids containing chlorophyll.

The kingdom-level classification of life is still widely employed as a useful way of grouping organisms. 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 these differences, the table gives a useful summary.

• There is no agreement at present on how many kingdoms there are in the Eukarya. In 2009, Andrew Roger and Alastair Simpson said this: "With the current pace of change in our understanding of the eukaryote tree of life, we should proceed with caution".^[17]

• Tree of Life