Need for Classification

Classification is the process of grouping things into convenient categories based on characters that can be easily observed and compared. The idea is intuitive: supermarket shelves are organised into groceries, cosmetics, toys, stationery and snacks so shoppers can find things quickly, and libraries sort books alphabetically or by genre — without this organisation, both tasks would waste enormous amounts of time. Biology faces exactly the same problem at a vastly larger scale: with millions of species already known and many more awaiting discovery, it would be impossible to study every organism individually without first sorting them into manageable groups, called taxa (singular taxon). A taxon is a formal category at any level of the hierarchy — Kingdom Animalia, for instance, is a taxon that includes every multicellular animal. …