Talk:Kingdom (biology)

message: I have tidied this section, previously rendered as enormously long due to blank lines, using the  template, which stops lines from concatenating. Pol098 (talk) 15:55, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: kingdoms

message: A group of scientists commissioned by the International Society of Protistologists has just published a new classification of Eukaryotes into six super-groups which they liken to kingdoms.
The abstract:
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1550-7408.2005.00053.x
The note in Nature:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7064/full/438008b.html
One interesting development (as someone who knows little about eukaryotic diversity) is that animals and fungi are grouped together (with a few other things) as Opisthokonta.  Plants are in Archaeplastida and the other four groups are all protists.  It is probaly too soon to update Wikipedia with this, but it's definitely worth being aware of. Jmeppley 22:06, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Six Eukaryotic Kingdoms 

message: I have an objection to the statement, "... bacteria have a radically different cell structure from other organisms -- they lack a nucleus ..."  There are two problems with this.
# It may be equally valid to say that what they lack is not a nucleus but an outer layer; i.e., a bacterium doesn't lack a nucleus, a bacterium is a nucleus. Or perhaps, to be fair, what they don't have is a division into an inner and outer layer.
# To say that they lack this feature displays the author's eukaryotic bias, as if to say, "Those poor, primitive bacteria; they haven't learned the right way to construct their cells. But we eukaryotes know better." (Or, it's like a black person saying that white people lack melanin.) I'd say, rather, that they are quite good at what they do; they don't lack anything. A more fair description might be that eukaryotes (or whatever the correct term is; I may be blurring the taxa, but let's put that aside) have a two-layer cell structure, whereas bacteria have a single-envelope structure. David Kantor 12:42, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: We could just say Bacteria and Archaea don't have nuclei. That's more or less objective I think. Of course yes bacteria are good at what they've evolved to do, I think it would be a scientifically accurate statement to say that Bacteria and Archaea are less complex than Eukarya in that they do not have nuclei or other organelles. 71.106.26.175 10:22, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  They Lack a Nucleus 

message: The following text was added:
The kingdoms are best classified according to their cellular structure (prokaryotic/eukaryotic), cellular organization (single and multi-cellular), and trophic function (chemo and photosynthetic autotrophs, and mobile and sessile heterotrophs). This biological kingdom chart results in
                 	Autotrophic        	Autotrophic       	Heterotrophic     	Heterotrophic     	
                 	Chemosynthetic     	Photosynthetic    	Mobile            	Sessile           	
Prokaryotic Cells	Kingdom Archaea    	Kingdom Eubacteria	Kingdom Eubacteria	Kingdom Eubacteria	Unicellular
Eukaryotic Cells 	Not found on earth.	Kingdom Protista  	Kingdom Protista  	Kingdom Protista  	Unicellular
Eukaryotic Cells 	Not found on earth.	Kingdom Protista  	Kingdom Protista  	Kingdom Fungi     	Unicellular
Eukaryotic  Cells	Not found on earth.	Kingdom Plantae   	Kingdom Animalia  	Kingdom Fungi     	Multicellular
Yeasts constitute a clear single-celled member of the fungus kingdom, placing it phylogenically separate from protists, thus accounting for the overlap within unicellular eukaryotic sessile heterotrophs.
I've temporarily removed this, because I don't think it's accurate.  For instance, it implies that Archaea and Eubacteria are separated by mode of nutrition, and Plantae and Protista are separated by multicellularity.  Neither is true.  There are chemoautotrophic Eubacteria, and depending on what system you use, multicellular protists (brown algae) or unicellular plants (green algae).  In both cases, the organisms are best classified by phylogeny, and the sort of things mentioned in the table are secondary. Josh 
:This kind of classification by mode of life (sessile/mobile) and nutrition was a respectable approach before phylogeny was practical, so maybe the article could say a bit more about it (and about its abandonment). Gdr 13:36, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Extra table 

message: I've just come here, and it may be clearer if I collect my remarks in one place, though they refer to various comments above. 
I was once a molecular biologist, specializing in evolutionary genetics--decades ago--and I am very much aware of how much things have changed and continue to change, and how in the past I've learned -- and taught -- things as definitively known, when this has not proved to be the case. Fortunately, WP is an ideal medium for showing the current knowledge, but that must be distinguished from  the superseded knowledge. We should write to thebest current 
It cannot be expected that there will be a "standard."  Our arrangement of the fudamental divisions is intended to reflect the pattern of their evolution, which is known (for these fundamental divisions) by gene sequencing and the interpretation of these sequences. This is not a static science. For exampe, it should not be assumed that the archea are monophyletic, for we may not yet have sequenced similar-appearing but basically divergent organisms.  With present knowledge (2006), it would be equally possible to separate the archea from everything else, everything else then being divided into prokaryotes and eukaryotes. This should not be disturbing--it is good to learn about the biology of the archea, regardless of their evolutionary position.  For that matter, what the tree of Life project does cannot possibly be definitive for all time either,  though it would be good to keep in step with it. 
And beware of thinking that our currrent knowledge is best found in text books and dictionaries. 
Again, with present knowledge, (as as Jmeppley says above) it appears not to be the case that  Fungi are either plants, or are  equally different from plants and animals. From mitochondrial genome sequencing, it has become clear that they are more closely related to animals--that in the course of evolution there was an organism ancestral to both animals and fungi, but not to plants. See http://www.springerlink.com/content/etj5861l14hpfcvc/ Not OA, but the abstract is sufficient.  This is how one classifies--not by picking a single visible feature. (See the excellent article on cladistics). We are, in effect, more closely related to mushrooms than to oak trees. 
As also discussed here previously, the Protista are not monophyletic. How they will ultimately be classified may not yet be clear, but at least that much is known.  I doubt there is a good way of handling this at the present time, as there appeatrs not to be any consensus among the specialists.  I have just learned here about the interesting article reffered to by :Jmeppley.  Perhaps it represents consensus--in which case the   knowledgable brief article on protista would need to be updated.  
As for technique, I know enough html  to revise the colored tables like those used here. We shouldn't have the most recent scheme in the illustration for the article be from 1990.  But the conventional  way is to show phylogetic trees is line drawings, as is done in the  cladistics article, and I do not know how to do that on WP. 
To summarize, as said above by others, this is not the place to work on a definitive classification. The article needs to be written to indicate the basics of what is in fact known, and what is not, and also to explain the history, with the understanding it will be updated from year to year.   And to remember that it is talking about the concept of "Kingdom" as a biologic term. I am not sure it is the place for a discussion of the present knowldge of the major divisions of organisms; on the other hand, such a discussion does have to go somewhere, and if its not being done elsewhere in WP...
DGG 06:23, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  additional thoughts and suggestions 

message: My high school science teacher said that he heard there were seven kingdoms. Please respond on my talk page. junebuggy 00:13, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes there is 41.113.209.34 (talk) 14:30, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Seven Kingdoms 

message: Not all bacteria are prokaryotes.  The current text implies otherwise.   130.126.245.245 23:51, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I beg to differ.  A defining characteristic of a bacterium is the absence of a nucleus.  Therefore, the current text remains correct. +A.0u 01:05, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:   Inaccuracy! 

message: Im a computer engineer, not a biologist ... but Ive been studying evolution and molecular biology as a hobby for decades.  The definitions of Kingdoms, Classes, Orders, etc has always struck me as somewhat arbitrary.  Especially now that the evolutionary tree is viewed as a very deep, very complex tree with millions of branches, the selection of Kingdoms is a very subjective action.  
In fact the subjectiveness is proven by the variety of Kingdom-choices (3- 5- 6-) that various experts propose.
Is the 5-Kingdom approach correct?  or is the 6-kingdom approach correct?  What does "correct" mean in this context?  Is there an _objective_ definition of "Kingdom" that (if we were omnipotent and knew everything) would produce a single, correct set of Kingdoms? 
My understanding is that there is no "correct" set of Kingdoms, because there is no objective definition of what a Kingdom is or is not.  Experts can propose their own Kingdoms based on subjective criteria.
Im not suggesting that kingdoms are worthless (we all know a Prokaryote when we see one) but I am saying that a sentence or two could be inserted in this article mentioning this subjectiveness.  
At the same time, Cladistics is an alternative approach to naming and organising organisms.  It de-emphasizes the paraphyletic groups like Bacteria, and instead focuses on clades, which are not tied into a rigid 7-deep or 8-deep classification nomenclature.  Shouldn't this article at least mention cladistics as an alternative that avoids some of the subjectiveness?  Or is there a holy war going on in the biology community and it would be inflammatory to contrast the two approaches?   I seem to recall that the Cladistics article does mention Kingdoms/Classes approach and has a brief comparison.
Noleander 18:27, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:   Mention Cladisitics?  Subjectiveness? 

message: Note: Due to Template:Biological systems, some reference names are shared between this article, Monera, and that template. Please keep the content of the reference tags in sync. —Random832 16:14, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  References 

message: Can viruses be addressed (or even mentioned) in this article? Badagnani (talk) 03:53, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Viruses 

message: The Five kingdom system and the Six kingdom system should be in separate articles.
We have Three domain system as a separate article... 
The development of top-level taxonomic divisions should also be a separate article.
76.66.195.63 (talk) 10:51, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree. We need a really good central article on kingdoms and the development of the different classifications well before we start to think about having separate articles on the different classification schemes. Once this article gets good enough and the sections long enough to be summarized, then we can spin the detail off into daughter articles per WP:SS. --mav (talk) 16:36, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I also disagree, we need to compare and contrast the different classification systems in this article. Tim Vickers (talk) 16:48, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree with the disagreements, this should remain a single article for now. —johndburger 00:43, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Split

message: Due to the number of vandals I'm wondering whether we should get this page protected from editing by non-wikipedians? Zero Kitsune (talk) 03:29, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Page Protection? 

message: As it stands now, there's an introductory paragraph and then this:
: Carolus Linnaeus distinguished two kingdoms of living things: Animalia for animals and Vegetabilia for plants (Linnaeus also treated minerals, placing them in a third kingdom, Mineralia). Linnaeus divided each kingdom into classes, later grouped into phyla for animals and divisions for plants. It gradually became apparent how important the prokaryote/eukaryote distinction is, and Stanier and van Niel popularized Edouard Chatton's proposal in the 1960s.[1]
: Robert Whittaker recognized an additional kingdom for the Fungi. 
Gradually became apparent? Somewhere between Linnaeus and the 1960s, or what? 
And who's this Chatton and what's his proposal? 
And then: an additional kingdom? In addition to what?
Mhu? :) -- Mvuijlst (talk) 07:29, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Text needs editing doesn't make sense now

message: The eukaryotes are shown to have 4 kingdoms as of 2007 suggestion which would make 6 kingdoms.  That concept isn't summarized or in the lower page table.
I'm going to add a summary to the recent advances section.  
The 6 new(tenuous) kingdoms would be Bacteria, Archaea, Plantae, Opisthokonts, Excavata and SAR.  
I don't know where that 18 to 30 kingdoms concept cane from although I don't doubt it.  Help with a source?  alatari/(talk) 08:56, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  2007 Kingdoms defined isn't clear 

message: Ok, I'm ready to undertstand that the matter is still in discussion between specialist. I did altough expect some kind of (may be incomplete and/or in discussion) list of phylla per kingdom.
What is the use of a classification if it is not to classify ? And what is the use of an Encyclodedia if it is not for a non specialist to get a quick undertanding about a subject ? 13:39, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: A reasonable complaint, but, alas, as of 2010, there just isn't a published classification which is supported by the most recently published (2008, 2009) phylogenetic research. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:36, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think some of the editors of this article are misguided. Generally, classification (of biological organisms) is for one of two purposes: for the layman (and introductory-level students) and for specialists. Another way to state that is classification is either for education or research communication (between experts). There is a failure to communicate when two (or more) editors speak past one another, one arguing about textbook content and the other mentioning what the research literature says. We now know enough to know that we'll never have a perfect classification scheme, and that includes cladistics. Why? Horizontal Gene Transfer. There is a lot of evidence that HGT has occurred between the Animal Kingdom and Bacteria. There is some examples of HGT between Bacteria and Archaea. I am not familiar with any examples of other mixing, but I doubt any major branch of life hasn't "stolen" genes from at least one other branch. And of course the current article says little about viruses, which would require special treatment in order to be excluded from "the Tree of Life", but if included would make the HGT issue even worse. (That is to say, viruses are highly inconvenient.)40.142.183.146 (talk) 15:56, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Complain from a non specialit 

message: Burki's paper doesn't suggest a 6 kingdom system.  His work was strictly with eukaryotes, and though he has some new divisions within eukaryota, it's still a 3 kingdom system:  Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukaryota. Jzeise (talk) 21:31, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: This section (Recent proposals) is significantly out-of-date. There is a published classification of the eukaryotes into 6 groups (Adl et al. 2005), which seems to have had some influence, since it was done for the International Society of Protistologists, but the paper deliberately doesn't use formal ranks. Others have treated these groups as Kingdoms within the Domain Eukarya/Eukaryota. I don't think there is a published classification (as opposed to phylogenetic trees) which is supported by work published since 2008. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:42, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  recent proposals 

message: Since I believed that the article (a) is important (b) was significantly out-of-date, I initially tried re-writing sections. However, I soon found that to remove inconsistencies which have developed over time, a more major re-write was necessary. So I've taken the liberty of being bold. I've tried to retain as much of the existing article as I could. The only parts I've removed are:
:*some duplication in the discussion of Woese
:*a one-sentence mention of the non-use of kingdoms in cladistics.
The latter topic is important, but it needs more than one sentence to discuss the problems of reconciling traditional Linnaean classifications with cladistic/plylogenetic ones. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:11, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re-write 

message: Reading news, i found out we have a new kind of life on the planet.
How is this to be organized in the systematics ?--93.199.255.211 (talk) 12:31, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  What about Craig Venter "invented" ? 

message: There are actually only four kingdoms -animalia, plantea, Protesta and Fungi. There are three domains the simply the Eucayriotes, the modern bacteria and the ancient bacteria.
:Don't the bacteria need their own kingdom? (I wonder if they have :File:Flag of Bacteria.svg or something... :P) Lanthanum-138 (talk) 08:12, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: See my comments below. There are not, "literally", any particular number of kingdoms. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:49, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  How many kingdoms are there? 

message: There is a recent discovery of a new Phylum of fungus, a phylum that is so different from all other fungi that some are calling it a new Kingdom
See our new article on Cryptomycota.
However, there is (understandably) a naming dispute on this article, because the science is so new.
One person suggests that the name Rozellida has been previously given to this clade. I, however, disagree. The following article says this:
:"The only previously known fungus that the team found to fall within the new group is the genus Rozella — long thought to be an oddity because of its lack of a chitinous cell wall — which diverged from the rest of the fungi very early on. "We thought that the Rozella branch of fungus was just a twig that had hung on over the course of evolution," says James, "but this paper shows us it's part of a whole evolutionary bush." 
:Nature News, Published online 11 May 2011 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2011.285 
:The evolutionary tree of fungi grows a new branch, Marian Turner 
:http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110511/full/news.2011.285.html
Also see the current Wikipedia article Rozella
Let's look for more sources, and discuss this issue further. RK (talk) 15:50, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Be careful about writing sentences like "How many kingdoms are there?" or "There are <insert number> kingdoms". They imply that kingdoms are entities which are fixed in number and which are 'out there' to be discovered. The reality is that kingdoms, like all taxa, are human constructs. The number of kingdoms is arbitrary. Give or take lateral gene transfer among prokaryotes, the tree of life (viewed as the full history of the evolutionary process) is 'out there' to be discovered. How the tree of life is to be divided up in a classification is a matter of opinion. In the past there have been periods when there was a scientific consensus on classification at the rank of kingdom, so you could write, as a shorthand, "There are two kingdoms, plants and animals" or "There are six kingdoms". At present there is no such consensus, so you can only write "In X's view of how life should be classified, there are N kingdoms". Furthermore, many biologists (not yet I think a majority, but a significant number) have abandoned or are abandoning the very idea of Linnean ranks, so for them the answer to "How many kingdoms are there?" is "This is a meaningless question because the very idea of kingdoms is obsolete." Peter coxhead (talk) 18:47, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  New Phylum, or possibily even a new Kingdom!

message: The illustration in this section is illegible -- virtually invisible -- black and faint, dark red on a very dark gray background.  Indeed, at first I thought the illustration box was empty.  Surely there must be a better, more legible rendering of this chart somewhere?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.92.174.105 (talk) 20:30, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  International Society of Protistologists Classification 2005 

message: Isn't there a debate that has raged, sometimes rather heatedly, in the biology and evolution journals for 10-20 years between Carl Woese and Ernst Mayr over the classification and division of the "tree of life"? Shouldn't that discussion be party to this article? Stevenmitchell (talk) 19:45, 19 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I think these two are rather out of date now. I guess more historical stuff could be added if anyone has time and energy. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:09, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Mayr is dead but his position regarding the classification is still defended by Cavalier-Smith, viz. holophyly or paraphyly is irrelevant for the validity of a taxon (this taxon can be a kingdom or an empire/domain). --Iossif63 (talk) 18:02, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Woese vs. Mayr 

message: Cavalier-Smith is one of the few who have continued to publish formal classifications at the top levels of the tree of life; most other researchers seem content to produce phylogenetic trees but not convert these into classifications. So it's inevitable that his views will have to feature significantly in this article. However, there seems to me to be little evidence that his classifications have been widely adopted; almost no-one supports his rejection of the prime importance of the Archaea-(Eu)bacteria divide. I think that as it stands the article could be accused of violating WP:UNDUE. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:31, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: You are free to add any published megaclassification you may know. As it is written in the article, Cavalier-Smith's classifications are not widely adopted. However they are influencial and widely discussed. I don't think that discussing Cavalier-Smith's classifications violates anything. Gupta rejects the archaebacteria-eubacteria divide as well, replaced by a monoderm-diderm dichotomy similar to the Negibacteria-Unibacteria dichotomy of Cavalier-Smith. --Iossif63 (talk) 11:55, 12 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too much prominence to Cavalier-Smith? 

message: I am a non-specialist who is reading "Symbiotic Planet" (1998) by Lynn Margolis. It seems to me that she merits some mention in this article.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.181.209.188 (talk) 14:57, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Lynn Margulis is not mentioned in this section on the 5-kingdom theory. When she essentially discovered the endosymbiont theory of the eukaryotic cell, she promoted the 5-kingdom system, almost single-handedly bringing it out of its coffin.  I was privileged to see her original films showing symbiotic bacteria, and heard her speak to our small class in microbial ecology at MBL in 1982.  At that time, the 5-kingdom theory was not in the high school textbooks.  I am pressed for time, but I could write something, sometime.  She is a giant in the field; not to mention her is almost criminal.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.119.145.192 (talk) 12:59, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Comment: Margulis is now mentioned in the article, Five kingdoms section. Pol098 (talk) 15:37, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lynn Margulis 

message: If instead of calling it the tree of life, we rename it something appropriate to the question it tries to answer:   from where did we come?  Remember at one time we thought we simply came from chimps and apes, which for some reason a lot of people considered distasteful?  Then we discovered mammals and plants came from bacteria, so then it was all right.   Perhaps the origin of life.  I’m unable to draw the tree, but these would be the branches:
400,000 years ago we evolved into our current form, homo homo sapiens.
2.5 million years ago we evolved into the genus we call homo.
65 million years ago we evolved into primates.
380 million years ago we evolved into animals.
3.7 billion years ago we evolved into bacteria.
13.798 ± 0.037 billion (what we call) years ago we came into being.
Just a thought 108.205.30.247 (talk) 14:08, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: There's a tricky relationship between this article and the "tree of life" in terms of the origin of species. This article is about a particular rank in a classification system; sure, what goes into the divisions at this rank (i.e. kingdoms) is influenced by phylogeny, but they aren't the same issue. So your comments don't really belong here. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:31, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text:  The image "Phylogenetic and symbiogenetic tree of living organisms, showing the origins of eukaryotes & prokaryotes" has plants coming from both protists and bacteria, this seems strange--please explain. Chaquarius (talk) 19:19, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:  In a very brief summary, it's because plant cells are derived from eukaryotic protists and contain plastids derived from cyanobacteria. The diagram also shows that earlier the mitochondria in plant (and animal) cells were derived from archaea. That's what the "symbiogenetic" bit of the caption means. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:02, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tree of Life 

message: Since everything else that had one was given a common name in the article, I gave one to Kelp, which was listed with a scientific one only.Ericl (talk) 19:09, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kelp 

message: Did Robert Whittaker propose the five kingdom model in 1959 or 1969? Both dates are used in Wikipedia and elsewhere on the internet. 69.4.235.91 (talk) 21:17, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Five kingdom model 

message: I think this section needs to be removed. I also think there should be a separate article for the historical developments to clarify the article. Theropod (talk) 22:38, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Over Representation of Cavalier Smith 

message: Hi. I removed the section on Cavalier Smith. I think the section dealing with Viruses could be moved to the Domain page. This article still needs major cleaning and editing to accurately convey important information to uninformed readers. Theropod (talk) 07:02, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: This needs more discussion, so I've undone what I'm assuming was your edit (although it shows up as an IP).  Yes, I think there's too much on Cavalier Smith,  he's one of the few who actually propose classifications to the level of Kingdoms, which is the topic of the page, so it's hard not to have him prominent. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:06, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cavalier Smith and Viruses 

message: I check pages listed in :Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of :Kingdom (biology)'s orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.
Reference named "Woese":
From Bacteria: 
From Archaea: 
I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 01:05, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:55, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Orphaned references in [[:Kingdom (biology)]] 

message: I have found I have had to organise, into some comprehensible summary, the voluminous patchwork of information and articles on these pages regarding taxonomy myself, and I am keenly aware both of the time this has taken me and of my unsuitedness to the task.  In hindsight the problem with the wiki articles seems to me to be an obsessive regard for historical developmental accounts and detailed scientific notes at the expense of clarity regarding the current state of knowledge in the field.  A small example (if any were needed) comes from the plethora of diagrams on this page.  There is what seems to me to be an admirable (if rather technical) diagram of the six kingdoms but nothing regarding the seven kingdom model section that follows it.  Although after days of burrowing around I feel I have arrived at a summary understanding, I think such a thing should be readily available to a reader without this and within moments of their beginning to read the key article here on biological taxonomy.  IMHO it is not wiki's role to provide a lengthy chalk 'n talk education course on the subject but to present information in the most clear, concise and comprehensive manner possible.  To achieve this with regard to (biological) taxonomy surely the historical account should be separated from expositions on current knowledge.  At present the two are tangled together, in a bloat of contradiction and conflict when the articles are looked at as a whole, that, barring the many regular but perfunctory health warnings, is simply thrown at readers for them to make of it what they might.  It all seems to be more of a display of clever erudition than an encyclopaedic work.  As I say I am unqualified for the task, but I would like to split history from current consensus, finishing the former with a precis of the latter and vice versa.  LookingGlass (talk) 20:23, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that the article has serious problems, but I'm not sure there's an easy solution. The core issue is that the concept of a "kingdom" as a formal rank now longer really works. The "state of knowledge" consists of our current understanding of the tree of life. This is still changing, although perhaps now more slowly. Deciding where in the tree to call the subtrees "kingdoms" is entirely abitrary, and not of much interest to many biologists. So it could be argued that the entire article is really only historical. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:36, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

text: The problem is (as I think has been said somewhere above) that "lack of interest" means "limited or no sources". One result is that those who are interested in rank-based classifications, like Cavalier-Smith, get undue attention in the article. We have to keep looking, but at present I only find the negative, i.e. if I look at journal articles on the deep phylogeny of life, I find lots of trees, sometimes with clade names, but few if any formal ranks. It's a general problem – how do you source a lack of interest? Peter coxhead (talk) 15:28, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  History or science? 

message: Domain starts: "a domain is the highest taxonomic rank of organisms". Kingdom starts: "is the third highest taxonomic rank, just below domain". 96.90.245.69 (talk) 23:40, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Chhandama (talk) 05:02, 20 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inconsistency between Domain / Kingdom articles. 

message: Where do they fit?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.249.23.158 (talk) 12:51, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hemimastigotes  

message: "As mitochondria were known to be the result of the endosymbiosis of a proteobacterium..." My understanding is that this is only a good (almost certainly correct) hypothesis, but less of an established fact than the text makes it sound.
NCBioTeacher (talk) 03:24, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  How confident are we of the origin of mitochondria? 

message: It's the animalia kingdom, not kingdom animalia.
:No, the style which is most common throughout organism articles and elsewhere is the "animal kingdom", but "kingdom Animalia". An Google search for the exact phrase "kingdom animalia" gave me about 2,140,000 hits versus 287,000 for "animalia kingdom". Peter coxhead (talk) 05:57, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: word order

message: In the 3 Kingdoms section, the claim:"Until then, the existence of such microscopic organisms was entirely unknown." referring to knowledge before the invention of the microscope is at best a bit misleading and at worst just plain wrong. It's a tautology that before we were able to observe microscopic life, we didn't observe microscopic life. The problem I see (I'm being a bit nit-picky) is that various microscopic life-forms have a macroscopic form. Take, for instance the slime molds. Both Myxogastria and the Dictyostelids have visible forms which were certainly observed before the microscope. That is, the organisms were known, but their microscopic stages couldn't be observed. Whether anyone believed the observable forms arose spontaneously or from the aggregation/fusion of "too-small-to-be-seen" precursors is anyone's guess. I note that there are many examples of swarming and aggregation of macroscopic organisms which could hint that microscopic organisms existed and were known in antiquity. Anyway, the sentence needs revision (or just simply eliminate it). What everyone alive in 1600 knew isn't known today, we can speak about the record, we might even speak about the popular/dominant Aristotelian spontaneous generation theory even though it was subject to increasing criticism/doubt. I also note that magnifying lenses were available before his invention of the microscope, but I'm not competent to speculate whether microorganisms could have been observed before his 1670's invention (optical clarity was a significant problem).40.142.183.146 (talk) 16:45, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, the phrase is written in a very subjective way. I'd simply delete it. —Snoteleks 🦠 17:33, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Leeuwenhoek