Order (taxonomy)
A taxonomic rank between family and class in biological classification.
Order is one of the eight major hierarchical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy, situated between family and class. It groups organisms that share a common ancestry, such as all owls belonging to the order Strigiformes. The recognition and composition of orders are determined by taxonomists and can vary, with some orders widely accepted and others rarely used.
Quick Facts
- Rank level
- Between family and class
- Naming suffix (birds, fishes)
- -iformes
- Naming suffix (most insects)
- -ptera
- First introduced by
- Augustus Quirinus Rivinus
- First applied consistently by
- Carl Linnaeus
Facts from the source article.
Hierarchy of ranks
For some clades under the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, additional classifications such as grandorder and mirorder are sometimes used, though not all are officially recognized. In botany, subclass and suborder are secondary ranks above and below order, and further ranks can be defined if clearly specified. The superorder rank, often ending in -anae, is commonly employed.
History
The order as a distinct rank with its own name was first introduced by German botanist Augustus Quirinus Rivinus in his plant classification treatises of the 1690s. Carl Linnaeus consistently applied it to all three kingdoms of nature in his Systema Naturae (1735). For plants, Linnaeus' orders were artificial, used to subdivide classes; later, in 19th-century works like the Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis and Genera Plantarum, the term ordo indicated what are now families. In French botanical publications, famille was used as the equivalent of ordo, a practice codified in Alphonse Pyramus de Candolle's Lois de la nomenclature botanique (1868). The 1905 International Botanical Congress assigned familia to the rank of family and ordo to a higher rank, previously often called a cohort. Some plant families retain names from Linnaean natural orders. In zoology, Linnaean orders referred to natural groups, and names such as Lepidoptera and Diptera remain in use.
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