Universal rules of nomenclature are:
- Biological names are generally in Latin and written in italics.
- The first word in a biological name represents the genus while the second component denotes the specific epithet.
- The first word denoting the genus starts with a capital letter while the specific epithet starts with a small letter.
Based on their characteristics, all living organisms can be classified into different taxa. This process is called taxonomy.
SPECIES: Taxonomic studies consider a group of individual organisms with fundamental similarities as species.
GENUS: Genus comprises a group of related species which has more characters in common in comparison to the species of other genera.
FAMILY: Family has a group of related genera with still less number of similarities as compared to genus and species.
ORDER: Order is the assemblage of families which exhibit a few similar characters.
CLASS: Class includes related orders.
PHYLUM: Classes comprising animals like fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds along with mammals constitute the next higher category called Phylum.
KINGDOM: All animals belonging to various phyla are assigned to the highest category called Kingdom.