Classification of Ants
The world is full of innumerable living beings who are diverse in their nature and characteristics. In order to understand them properly, biologists had devised a biological hierarchy system to classify living beings.
The classification is known as Taxonomic Classification or more specifically it is known as Taxon. It comprises of 8 stages or and at each step every organism is classified according to its specifications and traits.
These stages are:
- Kingdom
- Phylum
- Class
- Order
- Family
- Subfamily
- Genus
- Species
The last two steps i.e. Genus and Species are used to assign the biological name to every living organism. This system is known as Biological Nomenclature which was devised to give every organism it’s unique name while every animal has different names in different regions of the world. One of the most common pests in the world with a huge population is ants and this article will be discussing the biological classification of a very common meat ant.
Classification of Ants
Kingdom
This is the 1st and the very basic step of the classification. In this step, it is decided that whether an organism is an animal or a plant. If it’s a plant, then the kingdom would be Plantae or if it’s an animal, as in our case, it would be kingdom Animalia.
Phylum
The phylum is the taxon in which an animal is classified to a group alongside other animals with whom it shares a common and distinguishing feature. For example, Ants are classified into Phylum Arthropoda which means animals who have eight or more legs attached to their bodies.
Class
A 3rd stage of the classification is the Class of that animal. Class means the division of an animal with other animals of a similar kind. For example, Ants are classified into class “Insecta”. So every ant is a part of class Insecta along with other insects like Honey-Bees, Flies and likewise.
Order
As we are moving down the hierarchy of the system, we are becoming more specific about an organism. Similarly, following the Class, next step is Order and it is about mentioning some specific trait of that class. For example, the order of Ants is Hymenoptera.
Family
A family is about studying one and only one kind of organism under one roof. For example, all Ants are studied under the family name “Formicidae”. So, if you want to know about any kind of Ant, you can search it under the biological family of the Ant, mentioned above.
Subfamily
Following Family, are Subfamily or subfamilies. In this step, all the families of every member of a family will be defined. For example, our common meat Ant belongs to the Subfamily, known as “Dolichoderinae” while on the other hand there are 21 subfamilies of Ants exists on this planet.
Genus
The genus is the fundamental identification unit in the classification of living beings and as well as in Ants. This is used to give the fundamental identity to every organism. The Genus name is written before the species name and is written in italics. The Genus of our common meat ant is Iridomyrmex.
Special
The species name is the last step in the Biological classification. This is one of the critical stages of the classification as it is the name of that particular animal or plant under study. It gives the name and distinction to every organism and differentiates them from others. The organism under our study is common meat Ant and its species name is “Purpureus”.
The main purpose of this biological classification is to identify each and every single organism and place it under a categorical system, so whenever required, the compact study could be done. The classification of ants is just one type of insect, or animal for that matter, that falls under these categories.***
Continue reading about ants:
[catlist name=”ants”]