Video Transcript
The picture provided shows a bamboo
plant, which is a monocotyledon. Which of the following is the
correct order of taxonomic classification, from largest to smallest, for the bamboo
plant? (A) Plantae, Tracheophyta,
Angiospermae, monocotyledons. (B) Tracheophyta, Plantae,
Angiospermae, monocotyledons. (C) Plantae, Angiospermae,
Tracheophyta, monocotyledons. Or (D) monocotyledons, Plantae,
Tracheophyta, Angiospermae.
There are billions of different
organisms on planet Earth. To make these organisms easier to
study, scientists use taxonomic classification to order all of these organisms into
smaller and smaller groups according to their shared characteristics.
The kingdom is one of the broadest
taxonomic groups. A scientist named Whittaker defined
five different kingdoms into which he grouped organisms with certain basic
similarities. These kingdoms included Monera
consisting of all prokaryotic organisms, Protista consisting of eukaryotic
unicellular organisms or simple cellular colonies, Fungi, Plantae, and Animalia.
The question tells us that bamboo
is a plant, so it will be classified into kingdom Plantae. As the question asks us to find the
correct order of taxonomic classification for the bamboo plant from largest to
smallest and we know that the kingdom is one of the largest taxonomic groups, we can
eliminate options (B) and (D).
Kingdom Plantae still contains
millions of different organisms, so scientists classify them further into
Tracheophyta, otherwise known as vascular plants, and Bryophyta, otherwise known as
nonvascular plants. The vascular plants can be further
split into three divisions: Filicatae, which contains ferns, Gymnospermae, which are
plants that produce naked seeds, and Angiospermae, which are flowering plants. Angiospermae can be further split
into monocotyledons and dicotyledons, which each have their own special
characteristics.
The question tells us that the
bamboo plant is a monocotyledon, and now we have enough information to answer our
question. As the Tracheophyta division is
larger than the Angiospermae division, we know that the correct order of taxonomic
classification for the bamboo plant is (A): Plantae, Tracheophyta, Angiospermae,
monocotyledons.
