Logan's TWU Bio Blog

         Taxonomic Hierarchy Explained The taxonomic hierarchy is used to designate what an organism is. In this blog we will examine the taxonomy of the Canadian lynx, working our way from the broadest layer and getting more specific as we go on.  Above is the Canadian lynx, and below is a visual of the taxonomic hierarchy. The diagram above is missing the bottom-most layer which is the domain which for the lynx would be Eukaryote. Working our way up on the diagram we move to kingdom, this is where we see if it is a plant or animal and for our lynx it belongs to the kingdom Animalia. The next layer is phylum, for the lynx this is Chordata meaning it follows all the characteristics needed for it to be a Chordate. Class is the next layer this is where the organism is defined by what physical characteristics it has, in this case the lynx is classified as a mammal. Order is next and in simple terms this is where we see what the organism eats and our lynx is a ...