The kingdoms of nature they have been studied since the fourth century, it is a subject that has been evolving and adapting throughout history in the hands of many scientists, even today it is a subject open to debate and as long as new species continue to appear, it will continue to be.
What are the Kingdoms of Nature?
For centuries the great scientists have decided to seek the answers to everything, even today that search for knowledge continues and will be so until the end of time, because the human being is curious by nature, there are investigations that have been completed , others were left halfway and many have evolved over time, as has been the study of Characteristics of living beings.
Taxonomy is the science that is in charge of this study and The 5 Kingdoms belong to an extensive and varied system that exists to classify all existing, existing and future species. Initially, the first two kingdoms were created, which correspond to animalia and plantae, and later the three taxa were integrated: fungi, protista, and monera.
It is a subject that has been studied for many years, that has been perfected over time and that is still being developed to this day, since science manages to discover every so often a new species with characteristics that may be different or similar to those already studied.
To classify a newly discovered species, it is necessary to study it very in depth, since, as much as it may seem, it is difficult to classify a microscopic organism that must be subjected to very detailed studies.
This system is very extensive and has many divisions and subdivisions, which, as we mentioned before, are modified over time, and some new classifications may even arise that are better adapted to the new species being discovered. In the second category of the classification system are the kingdoms of living beings, just below domain which pigeonholes all three taxa.
What are the Kingdoms of Nature?
This categorization continues to be a debate today, since for a long time more kingdoms of nature have been wanted to be implemented, however, to this day the most accepted are those that were previously mentioned: animalia, plantae and the three taxa, any other classification that is intended apart, is usually taken as a subdivision of one of the taxa.
Animalia Kingdom
It is the kingdom that has the most classifications, since it brings together more than 2.000.000 species of animals, all distributed in two large branches that correspond to those that have a bone structure (vertebrates) and those that do not (invertebrates). We must emphasize that the human being is also found in this kingdom.
Animals are very diverse, all species have unique characteristics and are distributed throughout the planet, however, they have similar characteristics, for that reason they share the kingdom.
They have very complex bodies and their molecular composition is extremely extensive, they are made up of thousands of cells that work together to give shape to very diverse organisms. Their body cannot feed itself, so their survival depends on the interactions they have with other living beings, the benefits they get from them and their way of relating to the environment.
Their bodies are trained to adapt to the environment and they have complete control over their bodies and every movement they make guided by the instinct they possess, most reproduce sexually and whether they are large or small, with legs, fins or wings, all animals they are trained to develop and evolve individually or as a team.
Reino Plant
It is estimated that there are more than 300.000 species of plants in the world, it is speculated that the plants began being all aquatic, until in a long and complicated process they spread throughout the planet.
There is a wide variety of characteristics that can belong to plants, since all these species are very diverse and the main particularity that is taken into account for a species to be classified as a plant is that it feeds through the process of photosynthesis, for This reason is that plants are autotrophic, that is, they can obtain their nutrients from environmental and non-organic elements, unlike animals.
Its existence is of the utmost importance for the preservation of life on earth, since plants are the ones that command the oxygen cycle, which is the process in which they adsorb the gases that animals and humans exhale, they use it in their process. food and transform it into the oxygen that other living beings need.
They can reproduce sexually or asexually. Plants cannot move or move, they can only grow and develop but remain in the same place for life, unless an external element interferes, it can be natural or at the hands of man.
Reino I functioned
Corresponds to fungi such as mushrooms, molds, among others, there are approximately more than 100.000 known species of fungi, however, experts assume that the total number of species around the world is 1.5 million.
This kingdom has a very extensive diversity of species, with numerous characteristics and particularities, there are fungi of all colors, sizes, shapes and there are even bioluminescent ones. We can find them in the water, on land, in trees, being parasites or hosts in another organism and we can even see them in the kitchen through the process of food decomposition.
They feed through the decomposition of other organisms and in this way they also contribute to the preservation of the environment. They do not have mobility and are unable to move to another habitat. Its reproduction can be sexual or asexual by means of spores.
Reino monera
This kingdom is made up of bacteria, whose composition has a single cell and it is not covered by a membrane. They can live anywhere in the world, there are even bacteria that are part of the human body and that are necessary for its proper management.
They are the smallest organisms and it is impossible to see them unless a specialized tool is used for their observation, and they are also the oldest, it is presumed that they correspond to the first living being on the planet. Depending on the type of bacteria, they can be heterotrophic or autotrophic.
Reino Protists
The characteristic that all these organisms share is that their nucleus is surrounded by a membrane, that is to say that they are eukaryotes, however, their other characteristics do not agree with any of the other kingdoms that have this characteristic.
All the individuals that correspond to this kingdom have few similarities between them, for this reason there are no specific characteristics to classify these species.
History of the Kingdoms of Nature
The first recorded study of living beings dates back to the fourth century at the hands of Aristotle, who gave us an overview of what the kingdom of animals has been, this shows us how old these studies are and that all these great Scientists began to work only getting an idea of what the characteristics and classification of species would be today, keeping this in mind as their Research objectives.
1735
Many years after Aristotle and his pupil gave a general perspective of what animals and plants were, a Swedish scientist named Carlos Linnaeus presented the first classification system in which he included the other groupings class, order, family, genus and species (the category of phylum was added later), this first system only consisted of the first two kingdoms; animalia and plantae, which originally had other names.
1858
It was at the hands of the biologist Richard Owen that the third kingdom was born, it was named Protozoa at that time by the same English man, but it was in 1866 when it became known as Protista, a name given to it by the German naturalist Ernst Heinrich Philip.
This kingdom has its origin when the English understood that the characteristics of some microorganisms did not fully agree with the first two kingdoms, therefore he proposed the idea of a third category, however, it was the German who delved deeper into this kingdom. and to whom more credit was granted for his studies of it. This was the first time that unicellular organisms were divided from multicellular organisms.
1925
The first person to propose the fourth kingdom proposal was the French biologist Edouard Chatton, an idea that was later supported by the American Herbert Copeland, to finally be accepted in the world of science.
This occurred after finishing the study on the prokaryotic cell parts and eukaryote and it was observed that it was necessary to make a separation between the organisms whose cells are surrounded by a membrane (eukaryotes) and those that do not have this membrane (prokaryotes), the organisms of this second group (which are mainly bacteria), are the that make up the kingdom Monera.
1959
The American ecologist Robert Whittaker was the one who gave rise to this kingdom and presented the system of the 5 kingdoms of nature in 1969, being the most accepted by scientific colleagues and to this day it is the best known of all. All this was achieved after the American argued that fungi did not belong to plantae and that they did not fit with any of the other kingdoms already known.
Other Kingdoms of Nature
Since the proposal to include protista in the kingdoms was presented, many scientists have wanted to add others, based on this countless debates have been organized by many professionals and although many of these proposals have been taken into consideration and have even been introduced in many well-known works and writings, there is no other system more accepted than that of the 5 kingdoms of Whittaker.