Linnaean Vs. Cladistic System

Two important systems for classifying living organisms exists, the Linnaean system and the Cladistic system. Today’s older adults most likely learned of the Linnaean taxonomy system while in elementary and high school. The Linnaean taxonomy system, named after Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, is a rank-based system of classification used to categorize living things. Started in 1735, the Linnaean system categorized organisms into seven major ranked categories. These specific levels are, Start with kingdom and followed by phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. All of the proper names of taxa are capitalized except for the second part of a species name, which are always binomial. In addition, Species and genus names are always either written in italics or underlined. The Cladistic system is the other method of classifying organisms. In this system, organisms are classified into groups called clades, which is a Greek term meaning branch. English biologist Julian Huxley coined the term. Since Cladisitc’s classifying branches looks similar to branches on a family tree chart, which is also called a clade, the term is fitting for Cladistics. A clade is a single branch.
Transitional organisms between the equivalent ranks needed a better system of classification. Therefore, the Cladistic’s taxonomy approach of classifying organisms was developed and is most commonly used today for phylogenetic analysis. Cladograms can be created for any group of organisms. Cladistics gives scientists unambiguous, objective classifications, and is now a widely accepted method of classification. In this system, evolutionary biologists organize species on a cladogram, which is a branching diagram. Each branch represents an evolutionary linage with the names of the specific taxa at the end of the