Order ( Latin : ordo ) is one of the eight major hierarchical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy . It is classified between family and class . In biological classification , the order is a taxonomic rank used in the classification of organisms and recognized by the nomenclature codes . An immediately higher rank, superorder , is sometimes added directly above order, with suborder directly beneath order. An order can also be defined as a group of related families.
22-626: The Apodiformes / ˈ æ p ə d ɪ f ɔːr m iː z / is an order , or taxonomic grouping, of birds which traditionally contained three living families —the Apodidae (swifts), the Hemiprocnidae (treeswifts), and the Trochilidae (hummingbirds); however, in the Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy , this order is elevated to the superorder Apodimorphae , in which hummingbirds are separated into
44-456: A cohors (plural cohortes ). Some of the plant families still retain the names of Linnaean "natural orders" or even the names of pre-Linnaean natural groups recognized by Linnaeus as orders in his natural classification (e.g. Palmae or Labiatae ). Such names are known as descriptive family names. In the field of zoology , the Linnaean orders were used more consistently. That is,
66-505: A capital letter. For some groups of organisms, their orders may follow consistent naming schemes . Orders of plants , fungi , and algae use the suffix -ales (e.g. Dictyotales ). Orders of birds and fishes use the Latin suffix -iformes meaning 'having the form of' (e.g. Passeriformes ), but orders of mammals and invertebrates are not so consistent (e.g. Artiodactyla , Actiniaria , Primates ). For some clades covered by
88-566: A distinct rank of biological classification having its own distinctive name (and not just called a higher genus ( genus summum )) was first introduced by the German botanist Augustus Quirinus Rivinus in his classification of plants that appeared in a series of treatises in the 1690s. Carl Linnaeus was the first to apply it consistently to the division of all three kingdoms of nature (then minerals , plants , and animals ) in his Systema Naturae (1735, 1st. Ed.). For plants, Linnaeus' orders in
110-872: A map of Early–Middle Eocene Earth, see the Paleomap project; here note that both the Caucasus Mountains and the Alps did not exist yet and aegialornithids were possibly present in North America. By the late Eocene (around 35 MYA ), primitive hummingbirds started to diverge from the related jungornithids; the Middle Eocene Parargornis ( Messel , Germany) and the Late Eocene Argornis , found in today's southernmost Russia , belong to this lineage. Cypselavus (Late Eocene – Early Oligocene of Quercy, France)
132-587: A new order, the Trochiliformes . With nearly 450 species identified to date, it is the most diverse order of birds after the Passeriformes (the "perching" birds). As the name apodiforme —meaning "footless" in Greek —suggests, the legs of hummingbirds, swifts and treeswifts (or 'crested' swifts) are rather small and offer limited functional uses, aside from perching; their feet are covered with bare skin, rather than
154-419: Is determined by a taxonomist , as is whether a particular order should be recognized at all. Often there is no exact agreement, with different taxonomists each taking a different position. There are no hard rules that a taxonomist needs to follow in describing or recognizing an order. Some taxa are accepted almost universally, while others are recognized only rarely. The name of an order is usually written with
176-495: Is sometimes erroneously assumed to be identical to Cypselavus gallicus . Similarly, A. broweri is occasionally considered to be based on small individuals of A. wetmorei , and these latter two taxa were recently separated as genus Mesogiornis (Mlíkovský, 2002); this does not appear to have found general acceptance however. The presumed species Aegialornis szarskii is now placed in Scaniacypselus . Which genera apart from
198-473: Is somewhat difficult to assign; it is considered a primitive hemiprocnid. This would suggest that the major apodiform lineages diverged shortly after the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary . However, the perching adaptation of the foot of Eocypselus on which this theory rests may just as well be a symplesiomorphy . Most researchers believe that presently this genus cannot be unequivocally assigned to either
220-520: The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature , several additional classifications are sometimes used, although not all of these are officially recognized. In their 1997 classification of mammals , McKenna and Bell used two extra levels between superorder and order: grandorder and mirorder . Michael Novacek (1986) inserted them at the same position. Michael Benton (2005) inserted them between superorder and magnorder instead. This position
242-586: The Nanjemoy Formation of Virginia , United States ( USNM 496384) is very doubtful, as apodiform birds seem not to have occurred there until after the Eocene. This bone might more properly belong to the Parvicuculidae . The taxonomy of the species is quite convoluted, with both the smaller A. germanicus and the larger A. leenhardti being sometimes considered junior synonyms of A. gallicus , which in turn
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#1732886790131264-769: The Systema Naturae and the Species Plantarum were strictly artificial, introduced to subdivide the artificial classes into more comprehensible smaller groups. When the word ordo was first consistently used for natural units of plants, in 19th-century works such as the Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis of Augustin Pyramus de Candolle and the Genera Plantarum of Bentham & Hooker, it indicated taxa that are now given
286-477: The scutes seen on many birds. Another commonality amongst Apodiformes is their evolving longer wings with short and stout humerus bones, a development which has provided the hummingbirds, in particular, with the ideal wings for hovering . Together, the hummingbirds, swifts and treeswifts share several anatomical commonalities with their likely-closest extant relatives in the genus Aegotheles —the owlet-nightjars; in particular, similarities are noted between
308-644: The Apodiformes or the Caprimulgiformes. The Early Eocene Primapus , found in England, is similar to both a primitive swift and the aegialornithids , which are in some aspects intermediate between swifts and owlet-nightjars. Fossil evidence demonstrates the existence of swifts during that period in Europe . At that time, most of Europe had a humid, subtropical climate, possibly comparable to modern-day southern China. For
330-546: The birds' skull structures. The owlet-nightjars are, apparently, convergent with the closely-related Caprimulgiformes (nightjars), which form a clade known as Cypselomorphae together with the Apodiformes and the frogmouths , oilbirds and potoos . The Apodiformes evolved in the Northern Hemisphere. Eocypselus , a primitive genus known from the Late Paleocene or Early Eocene of north-central Europe,
352-503: The more extreme adaptations to an aerial lifestyle that swifts show today, but already having sickle-shaped wings like them. They do not appear to be a direct ancestor of modern swifts, however, but rather a group that retained an overall basal morphology. Altogether, they were not too dissimilar from modern treeswifts . Fossils of Aegialornis have been found in Middle to Late Eocene deposits of Germany and France. An Early Eocene record from
374-698: The orders in the zoology part of the Systema Naturae refer to natural groups. Some of his ordinal names are still in use, e.g. Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) and Diptera (flies, mosquitoes, midges, and gnats). In virology , the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses 's virus classification includes fifteen taxomomic ranks to be applied for viruses , viroids and satellite nucleic acids : realm , subrealm , kingdom , subkingdom, phylum , subphylum , class, subclass, order, suborder, family, subfamily , genus, subgenus , and species. There are currently fourteen viral orders, each ending in
396-547: The precursor of the currently used International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants . In the first international Rules of botanical nomenclature from the International Botanical Congress of 1905, the word family ( familia ) was assigned to the rank indicated by the French famille , while order ( ordo ) was reserved for a higher rank, for what in the 19th century had often been named
418-494: The rank of family (see ordo naturalis , ' natural order '). In French botanical publications, from Michel Adanson 's Familles naturelles des plantes (1763) and until the end of the 19th century, the word famille (plural: familles ) was used as a French equivalent for this Latin ordo . This equivalence was explicitly stated in the Alphonse Pyramus de Candolle 's Lois de la nomenclature botanique (1868),
440-511: The suffix -virales . Aegialornithidae Aegialornis gallicus ( type ) Aegialornis leenhardti (disputed) Aegialornis wetmorei Aegialornis broweri (disputed) Aegialornis germanicus (disputed) Aegialornis is a genus of prehistoric apodiform birds . It formed a distinct family , the Aegialornithidae , and was in some ways intermediate between modern swifts and owlet-nightjars , lacking
462-418: Was adopted by Systema Naturae 2000 and others. In botany , the ranks of subclass and suborder are secondary ranks pre-defined as respectively above and below the rank of order. Any number of further ranks can be used as long as they are clearly defined. The superorder rank is commonly used, with the ending -anae that was initiated by Armen Takhtajan 's publications from 1966 onwards. The order as
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#1732886790131484-643: Was either a primitive hemiprocnid or an aegialornithid. The placement of the Aegialornithidae is not quite clear. Various analyses place them sufficiently close to the Apodiformes to be included here, or into the unique owlet-nightjar lineage in the Cypselomorphae. † Aegialornithidae † Laputavis Hemiprocnidae † Scaniacypselus Apodidae † Cypselavidae † Jungornithidae Trochilidae ORDER APODIFORMES [REDACTED] Order (biology) What does and does not belong to each order
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