The Five Kingdoms of Life – Biology Poster, 38×26″
by American Educational Products

Over time, the way that scientists have classified biological material has changed, and it would be short-sighted to assume that it will not change again in the future as we discover more and more about the different organisms that inhabit the earth. At the moment, it is all divided into three Domains: Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya, which are together divided into five kingdoms of life.

To determine into which kingdom an organism should fall, scientists are faced with answering a number of questions about an organisms biological makeup. Questions they have to answer include such things as: what is the number of cells in the organism (single, or many), is there a presence or absence of internal structures (ie: nucleus, cell wall/membrane, etc…), and by what method do they produce energy?

The five kingdoms shown on this poster are Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Protista and Monera. The first four comprise the domain Eukarya, while the last one spans both Bacteria and Archaea. This is the more traditional version of taxonomy, and while a “newer” version was developed in 2010, the version of classification of life on this poster is still the most widely used.

This chart depicts examples from each of the five kingdoms, with two each from Monera and Protista, and one each from Fungi, Plantae and Animalia. An 8th example is included as a classification puzzle for students to solve.