Taxonomic Category

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taxonomic category

[¦tak·sə¦näm·ik ′kad·ə‚gȯr·ē]

(systematics)

One of a hierarchy of levels in the biological classification of organisms; the seven major categories are kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species.

Taxonomic Category

a concept in taxonomy, used to designate a coordinate group of objects—a taxon. In the classification of a specific sphere of reality, the system of taxonomic categories constructed must give a complete description of the reality from the standpoint of the hierarchical structure; such are the taxonomic categories, for example, that describe animal or plant systematics. Thus, taxonomic categories directly characterize not the concrete objects of classification, but only the method of the classification’s construction and the logical principles that resolve problems of typology.

References in periodicals archive ?

Chen's team therefore folds anomalocaridids, Kerygmachela, and Opabinia together in a taxonomic category closely related to arthropods, perhaps even with the phylum Arthropoda.

The first monsters: long before sharks, Anomalocaris ruled the seas

For example, "monkey" was identified as an appropriate taxonomic category, and participants were not asked to distinguish between monkey species.

Exposure to nonhuman primates in rural Cameroon

For each species or taxonomic category, abundance estimates (N) were made with line-transect methods by using the software program DISTANCE (Colorado Coop.

Abundance of cetaceans in the southern U.S. North Atlantic Ocean during summer 1998

Species is the most fundamental taxonomic category used in all biological classification.