Number of kingdoms of living nature. What kingdoms of living organisms are distinguished in nature?

Biology - the science of living nature

Every person comes into contact with living nature - the organic world. These are various plants, animals, fungi, bacteria. And people themselves are representatives of the organic world.

The characteristics of living nature and its diversity are studied by the science of biology (from the Greek. bios- "life", logo- "teaching").

The first living organisms appeared on Earth a very long time ago, more than 3.5 billion years ago. They had a simple structure and were single small cells. Later, more complex unicellular and then multicellular organisms arose. Since then, their descendants have achieved enormous diversity. Among them there are both large and microscopically small organisms: all kinds of animals, plants, fungi, bacteria and viruses.

All of them are living beings, very different in their properties. That is why they are all divided into large groups, which scientists call kingdoms . Kingdoms unite organisms that are similar to each other in basic properties.

Kingdoms of living nature. (Slide show)

A kingdom is a very large group of organisms that have similar characteristics of structure, nutrition and life in nature.

To preserve living nature in all its diversity, you need to know how different organisms are structured and how they are interconnected in nature; to study the conditions in which representatives of all kingdoms live and develop, how widespread they are on the earth’s surface, what role they play in nature, what is their value for people and by what characteristics they differ from each other. To do this you need to study biology.

Kingdoms of living nature. (Interactive task)

Acquaintance with the science of biology at school begins with studying plant kingdoms .

Plants are found all over the globe: on land, in water, forests, swamps, meadows, steppes, gardens, parks. Everywhere you can see a variety of plants - wild and cultivated species. Plants have many common characteristics: almost all of them lead a sedentary lifestyle, have chlorophyll and are capable of forming organic substances in the light. That is why they belong to the same kingdom of living nature - the plant kingdom.

The science that studies the plant kingdom is called botany(from Greek nerds– “grass”, “plant”).

Botanical scientists find out the structural features of different plants, study how they grow, feed, reproduce, and what environmental conditions they need. They also find out how such a wide variety of plants appeared on Earth, what the first plants were like, which of the ancient plants have survived to this day, what properties of plants are useful or harmful to humans, and how to preserve the plant world of the Earth.

The study of plants began in the 4th century. BC e. ancient Greek scientist Theophrastus. He combined his observations with practical knowledge about the use of plants accumulated by farmers and healers, with the judgments of scientists about the plant world, and created the first system of botanical concepts. Therefore, in the history of science, Theophrastus is called the father of botany.

His real name is Tirthamos (Tirtham), and his name is Theophrastus, i.e. “divine orator”, his teacher Aristotle gave him for his outstanding gift of eloquence.

The history of botany shows how science arose from the generalization of man's practical knowledge of cultivating plants and using them for various purposes, as well as from scientists' observations of wild plants.

Currently, botanists are studying the laws of plant life, their external and internal structure, processes of reproduction and life activity, distribution over the earth's surface, growing conditions, relationships with other living organisms and the environment.

When asked, list the name of the kingdom of living nature given by the author Eurovision the best answer is Kingdoms of Wildlife

Answer from seaweed[guru]
Fauna

Answer from Daria Zaikovskaya[newbie]
plants, bacteria, fungi, animals

Answer from Millet[newbie]

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Plant kingdom.
Kingdom of mushrooms.
Animal Kingdom.

Answer from Kirill Ogarkov[newbie]
The largest groups of life on Earth are organized into kingdoms. Let's see into which kingdoms scientists have united various forms of life.
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Kingdom of bacteria (prokaryotes).
It combines microscopic (usually single-celled) organisms that do not have a nucleus in their cells. In addition to the bacteria themselves (staphylococci, vibrios, etc.), primitive unicellular algae - cyanea (or blue-green algae) - are often included here. Blue-green algae are one of the oldest forms of life on Earth. They appeared, according to scientists, more than 2 billion years ago. They can only be called algae conditionally, due to the primitiveness of their structure.
Kingdom of protists (eukaryotes).
Unlike representatives of the kingdom of bacteria, the kingdom of protists is represented by microorganisms that have a nucleus in their cells. The most famous representatives of this kingdom are diatoms (diatomaceous algae), peridinea and euglenaceae, as well as other flagellated algae.
Single-celled diatoms are among the most common representatives of the protist kingdom. There are more than 10 thousand varieties of them, most of which are marine inhabitants. Under the lens of a conventional microscope, diatoms look like circles, ovals, stars, etc. However, if you look at a diatom under a more powerful microscope, you can see that its gelatinous body rests in a tiny, durable mesh shell. This animal's exoskeleton is built from silica. Diatoms cannot move independently and are transported by water currents. But among the procysts there are also animals capable of independent movement, for example, the single-celled flagellated alga Euglena.
Euglenaceae number about 60 species in their ranks. They live only in fresh waters.
Plant kingdom.
This kingdom unites multicellular organisms that are not able to move independently and use the energy of sunlight to convert inorganic substances into organic ones (photosynthesis). I think that there is no need to give examples of representatives of this kingdom - these are the most diverse types of water and land plants with a more complex organization than unicellular ones.
Kingdom of mushrooms.
It is not by chance that mushrooms are allocated to a separate kingdom. These living organisms are neither animals nor plants, and do not fall under the classification characteristics of representatives of these kingdoms. Fungi include many spore-bearing organisms, molds, and mushrooms themselves (poisonous and edible).
Animal Kingdom.
The most numerous and representative kingdom. This includes all organisms that feed on ready-made organic compounds (plants or other animals, including their remains). Animals include single-celled living organisms (amoebas, ciliates), and huge mammals (whales, elephants, fish, giant jellyfish, etc.)
The sharks that interest us, and even you and me, are also included in this kingdom.

Four kingdoms of wildlife

The picture of the transformation of the globe by plants requires some clarification.

The fact is that real plants became involved in the process of photosynthesis quite late: only two billion years ago (this is less than half of the entire history of the Earth). Before them, only bacteria and blue-green algae endowed with chlorophyll engaged in photosynthesis (however, the bacteria did not release molecular oxygen into the environment). Only they, bacteria and blue-green algae, existed on Earth then. There were no other plants or animals yet. Now bacteria and blue-green algae are no longer considered plants! Pre-nuclear organisms were defined as a special kingdom and even a super-kingdom. Blue-green algae and bacteria do not have a nucleus. Nucleic acid (DNA) is scattered throughout the cell. And in other living beings, DNA is collected in the nucleus, separated from the cytoplasm of the cell by a membrane. Here it is located in chromosomes - microscopic bodies that carry hereditary information.

Biologists have developed a new system of the living world - not with two kingdoms, as before (animals and plants), but with four: shotguns (blue-green algae and bacteria), animals, fungi and plants. Each kingdom has two sub-kingdoms. In animals - protozoa (unicellular) and multicellular. Crushers contain bacteria and blue-green algae. In mushrooms and plants - higher and lower fungi and plants.

The subkingdom of bacteria also includes microorganisms such as actinomycetes, spirochetes, mycoplasmas, rickettsia and viruses (the latter were defined here not without doubt, conditionally, pending their more complete study).

Another interesting thing is that mushrooms, motionless creatures that feed on the dust of the earth, according to the new system, turn out to be closer relatives of animals than plants! Let's return to bacteria for a moment to talk about them in more detail. After all, the role of bacteria in the existence of all life on Earth, both before and now, is especially great.

Bacteria have a bad reputation. Everyone knows that they are the culprits of dangerous diseases: tuberculosis, typhoid fever, dysentery, cholera, leprosy. But how many people know that there are also beneficial bacteria? It’s not even enough to say useful, simply necessary for us! Life on Earth would be impossible without bacteria.

Bacteria saturate the soil with nitrogen, increasing its fertility, form the soil itself, help people ferment cucumbers, cabbage and silage for livestock, prepare cheeses, curdled milk, vinegars, and linen fabrics. Settling in the intestines, they digest indigestible food for us. They are already illuminating the dark abyss of the sea with the ghostly radiance of living lights, transforming into light special substances that are found in the “pocket flashlights” of deep-sea fish and squid.

Bacteria have three types of cell shape: round, spiral and rod-shaped.

Round bacteria are called cocci: monococci, when they are single balls; diplococci when they are double; tetracocci, when four balls are connected together; sartsinami - if there are eight or more balls; streptococci, when round bacteria form a chain, like beads strung on a thread, and staphylococci, if they are piled up in a disorderly heap.

Spiral bacteria are vibrios (their body is only slightly curved), spirilla are twisted in one or several turns, and spirochetes are in thin and finely curled spirals.

Rod bacteria form two groups: ordinary bacteria and bacilli. The first ones do not have disputes. The latter, when external conditions are unfavorable, separate inside their body from the protoplasm filling the cell a small, oval and shiny lump of living protein - a spore. (The bacillus then disintegrates.)

The spore is surrounded by a dense shell, is as dehydrated as possible and can withstand the crushing blows of hostile elements without harm to the spark of life contained in it. For example, a pressure of 20 thousand atmospheres! Or space cold of 253 degrees! Heating up to 90, and some spores - up to 140 degrees!

For years this preserved quantum of life lies in lethargic peace, so that someday later, when it finds itself in more favorable conditions, it awakens. To multiply, to multiply, without counting, without measure, is the only concern of the newly revived bacillus.

And although it reproduces in the most primitive way: it is torn in half, the number of its descendants soon reaches astronomical levels. After all, each half divides again after 20–30 minutes, and so on endlessly.

Let's say, for example, that they divide every half hour. After an hour, four bacteria are formed from one bacterium. By the end of the second hour there will be 16 of them, by the end of the third - 64. Then their number, increasing exponentially, quickly reaches the numbers that mark milestones in space. In 15 hours there will be about 1,000,000,000 bacteria, and in a little over a day there will be 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

And even if each of them occupies no more than one cubic micron in space, then an octillion of bacteria (and the figure given above is an octillion) can hardly be packed in a tank a kilometer high, wide and long. To transport such a mountain of bacteria, a train of 20 million wagons would be required!

Of course, when making these calculations, we assumed that none of the newborn bacteria dies, at least during the first two days. But, fortunately, this never happens: most of them die. And we chose the optimal division rate; Not all bacteria multiply so quickly. Tuberculosis bacteria, for example, divide only once every day and a half.

Among the bacteria there are many saprobes, which cause the rotting of proteins and other organic substances, decomposing them into simpler components - again into carbon dioxide, for example, and ammonia.

These bacteria are very useful. Mountains of dead bodies would lie everywhere if not for bacteria. They free the planet from plants and animals in which life has already died out. Rotting with the help of bacteria, the ashes of corpses return to the ground.

There are also bacteria - autotrophs, that is, they feed themselves. These from inorganic substances (ammonia, for example, carbon dioxide and various salts) create organic ones (proteins, starch) and build their body from them. They extract the energy necessary to transform simple substances into complex ones from the sun's rays. Chemotrophic bacteria also feed on carbon dioxide and ammonia, but they obtain energy for the production of protein by oxidizing iron, manganese or molybdenum, sulfur and silicon (“gnaw”, so to speak, on stone and metal!).