We begin this morning with a brief review of something most of us learned in ninth grade biology and then promptly forgot as soon as the test was over, and that is how science organizes and classifies living things.

Maybe these layers of classification will ring a bell:

Kingdom
Phylum
Class
Series
Family
Genus
Species

Remember?

No?

Okay, well, now you know. This is how science organizes all living things so we can see they are related to each other, when they are related, and how they are separated from each other when they aren’t.

To start, all living things are divided into five kingdoms. I won’t bore you with all their names but you know, of course, that two of them are the animal kingdom and the plant kingdom.

Kingdoms are divided into phyla (plural for phylum).

Phyla are divid…