What are the five large groups that living things can be classified into?

Answer 1

More correctly than saying all living things, you could say all eukaryotes (see diagram below). This is called the five-kingdom system of classification. I'm in the Taxonomicon at the moment and I copied this from there. I've used it for assignments before and it is very detailed. I love it.

www.taxonomy.nl - the Taxonomicon.

edit: The five kingdom system is not often used anymore in academia. This is because the monera kingdom has been eliminated and put into two domains (above the kingdom level) Bacteria and Archaea. I have edited the information below to show this change.

Biota (all living things) (viruses are NOT living)
- domain Bacteria
- domain Archaea
- domain Eukarya - for expansion see below

Eukarya
- Kingdom Animalia
- Kingdom Plantae
- Kingdom Protista
- Kingdom Fungi
-

Basically:

-Animal Kingdom -- this group is a very large group. It consists of both invertebrates and vertebrates. The groups within the invertebrates include: echinodermata (sea stars, sea urchins, sea cucumbers), arthropods (insects, arachnids, and crustaceans), nematodes (roundworms) molluscs (squid, snails, clams and other bivalves with mantles), annelida (segmented worms(earth worms, leeches, etc), nemartea (ribbon worms), platyhelminthes (flat worms) Rotifera (radial symmetrical), Acoleomorpha, Cnidaria (jelly fish, corals, sea anemones, hydras) and finally porifera (sponges, and other filter feeders). The vertebrates include Agnatha (jawless fishes such as lampreys), Condrichythyes (cartilagenous fish such as sharks), Osteichythes (ones like halibut), Amphibia (amphibians (toads for example), Repitilia (snakes, alligators for example), Aves (birds), and mammals (marsupials, rodents, felines, canines, etc)

-Plant Kingdom includes a fairly big group of plants as well. Some of the plants or groups of plants that are within this group are bryophytes (mosses and lichens), liverwort, gymnosperms (conifers, decidious and other trees), angiosperms (flowering plants), Pteridophyta (ferns). These are just a few of the examples in this category. It also includes all of the algae that have pigments such as chlorophyll.

-Protist Kingdom include other eukaryotic groups. These ones are examples such as plant like algaes (that don't carry the pigment chlorophyll), these may include brown and red algae, and animal like algaes and there are also ones that are mobile such as paramecium and amoeba, and then spores for example. Flagellates with long flagella e.g., Euglena Amoeboids with transient pseudopodia e.g., Amoeba Ciliates with multiple, short cilia e.g., Paramecium Sporozoa non-mobile parasites; some can form spores e.g., Toxoplasma

-Fungi Kingdom this kingdom is known for decomposers. The popular group within fungi are mushrooms and other abiotic proerties within the environment that will work on the nitrogenous cycle.