B1 The five kingdoms of organisms

The five kingdoms of organisms. Sounds impressive eh?! Kind of Lord of the Rings stuff. It's not really too hard - just lots of facts to learn. It's more of classification and basically the reasons and characteristics to explain why we have these 5 kingdoms. Oh yes, the 5 kingdoms are:

1. Animalia
2. Plantae
3. Fungi
4. Protoctista
5. Prokaryote.

So you can take any living thing and put it into one of these 5 groups which are called kingdoms.

Now, lets think how we could divide all the living things into groups.

Some are unicellular - these have one cell and others are multicellular.
Many cells have a nucleus, like our cells but some like bacteria do not. Bacteria are members of the Prokaryotae group. You could also look at how the living thing gets its food. Some, like plants, make their food autotrophically using photosynthesis, while animals get their food by eating and digesting other living things heterotrophically. Fungi also get their food by digesting other organisms, but they do this outside the body and they are said to feed saprophytically.

So now we've got the basic differences between living things to put them into one of the 5 kindoms - hurrah! Here goes:

1. Animalia - multicellular, heterotrophic so no photosynthesis so no chlorophyll. Look in the mirror! You are not green - I hope. Complicated cells with a nucleus. 
2. Plantae - multicellular, autotrophic feeders. Photosynthesises using chlorophyll. Cell wall made of cellulose. Complicated cells with a nucleus.
3. Fungi - multicellular, cell wall is not made of cellulose. saprophytic feeders so no chlorophyll. Complicated cells with a nucleus.
4. Protoctista - Mostly unicellular. Complicated cell with a nucleus.
5. Prokaryote - Unicellular. Simple cell structure with no nucleus.

Learn the above because it comes up a lot in exams. Last little bit coming up. There is no kingdom for viruses because it is not classed as being alive.Yes, I know that viruses multiply inside a cell but it does not show any other life processes like growth or feeding so it is not alive.