Primate Taxonomy

The Animal Kingdom is divided into 25 to 30 major groups called phyla (singular, phylum): the Arthropoda (insects and spiders), Mollusca,Coelenterata (sea anemones and jellyfish), Echinodermata (starfish and sea urchins), and many other phyla that most people would recognize only as worms. The phyla are divided into subordinate groups called Classes, the classes again into subordinate groups called Orders, the orders into Families, the families into Genera (singular, genus), the genera into Species. Within each category, subordinate categories can be inserted: thus, families can be divided into subfamilies where needed (another way of looking at this is to say that the genera of a family can be grouped into subfamilies). Super-families (groups of closely related families) can also be instituted. With finer and finer divisions we may well run out of ranks, and unranked groups are perfectly feasible, provided it is widely understood where they belong in the main classification.