In scientific classification used in biology, the order (Latin: ordo, pl.: ordines) is a rank between class and family, or a taxon at that rank. If desired, orders can be grouped in superorders, and divided into suborders and further, into infraorders.
Relative position in the taxonomic hierarchy
The basic ranks are given in bold, the derived, in italics.
- Class (classis)
...
- - Superorder (superordo)
- - - Order (ordo)
- - - - Suborder (subordo)
- - - - - Infraorder (infraordo)
...
- - - - - - Family (familia)
History of the concept
The order as a distinct rank of biological classification having its own distinctive name (and not just called a higher genus (genus summum)) was first introduced by a German botanist Augustus Quirinus Rivinus in his classification of plants (appeared in a series of treatises in the 1690s). Carolus Linnaeus was the first to apply it consistently to the division of all three kingdoms of Nature (minerals, plants, and animals) in his Systema Naturae (1735, 1st. Ed.). Linnaeus used orders both in his artificial and his natural classification of plants distinguishing clearly between artificial orders (introduced to subdivide the artificial classes into more comprehensible smaller groups) and natural ones (based on the overall affinity). It should be noted, however, that in the French botanical literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the groups closely resembling in composition the linnaean natural orders were called families (French: famille, pl.: familles) (beginning with Michel Adanson's Familles naturelles des plantes (1763)). This equivalence was explicitely stated in the Alphonse De Candolle's Lois de la nomenclature botanique (1868), the precursor of the currently used International Code of Botanical Nomenclature. It was not until the beginning of the 20th century that the botanical family acquired the status of a distinct rank separated from and subordinate to the order. Some of the plant families still retain the names of linnaean natural orders and even the names of some pre-linnaean natural groups recognised by Linnaeus as orders in his natural classification (e.g. Palmae or Labiatae). Such names are known as descriptive family names. In Zoology, the linnaean orders were used more consistently, and some of his ordinal names are still in use (e.g. Lepidoptera for the order of moths and butterflies, or Diptera for the order of flies, mosquitoes, midges, and gnats).
See also:
