The hierarchy of biological classification's eight major taxonomic ranks, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia. A kingdom contains one or more phyla. Intermediate minor rankings are not shown.

In biology, a phylum (English pronunciation: /ˈfaɪləm/; plural: phyla)^{[note 1]} is a taxonomic rank below kingdom and above class. "Phylum" is equivalent to the botanical term division.^[1] The kingdom Animalia contains approximately 35 phyla; the kingdom Plantae contains 12 divisions. Current research in phylogenetics is uncovering the relationships between phyla, which are contained in larger clades, like Ecdysozoa and Embryophyta.

General description and familiar examples[link]

Informally, phyla can be thought of as grouping organisms based on general specialization of body plan,^[2] At the most basic level, a phylum can be defined in two ways: as a group of organisms with a certain degree of morphological or developmental similarity (the phenetic definition), or a group of organisms with a certain degree of evolutionary relatedness (the phylogenetic definition).^[3] Attempting to define a level of the Linnean hierarchy without referring to (evolutionary) relatedness is an unsatisfactory approach, but the phenetic definition is more useful when addressing questions of a morphological nature—such as how successful different body plans were.

Definition based on genetic relation[link]

The largest objective measure in the above definitions is the "certain degree"—how unrelated do organisms need to be to be members of different phyla? The minimal requirement is that all organisms in a phylum should be related closely enough for them to be clearly more closely related to one another than to any other group.^[3] However, even this is problematic, as the requirement depends on our current knowledge about organisms' relationships: As more data becomes available, particularly from molecular studies, we are better able to judge the relationships between groups. So phyla can be merged or split if it becomes apparent that they are related to one another or not. For example, the bearded worms were described as a new phylum (the Pogonophora) when described in 1914, but molecular work almost a century later found them closely related to annelids and merged the phyla, so that the bearded worms are now an annelid family.^[4] Likewise, the highly parasitic phylum Mesozoa was divided into two phyla Orthonectida and Rhombozoa, when it was discovered the Orthonectida are deuterostomes and the Rhombozoa protostomes.^[5]

This changeability of phyla has led some biologists to call for the concept of a phylum to be abandoned in favour of cladistics, a method in which plan" based definition of a phylum has been proposed by paleontologists Graham Budd and Sören Jensen. The definition was posited by paleontologists because extinct organisms are typically hardest to classify; they can be off-shoots that diverged from a phylum's line before the characters that define the modern phylum were all acquired.

Definition based on body plan[link]

By Budd and Jensen's definition, phyla are defined by a set of characters shared by all their living representatives. This has a couple of small problems—for instance, characters common to most members of a phylum may be secondarily lost by some members. It is also defined based on an arbitrary point of time (the present). However, as it is character based, it is easy to apply to the fossil record. A more major problem is that it relies on an objective decision of which group of organisms should be considered a phylum.

Its utility is that it makes it easy to classify extinct organisms as "stem groups" to the phyla with which they bear the most resemblance, based only on the taxonomically important similarities.^[3] However, proving that a fossil belongs to the crown group of a phylum is difficult, as it must display a character unique to a sub-set of the crown group.^[3] Furthermore, organisms in the stem group of a phylum can possess the "body plan" of the phylum without all the characteristics necessary to fall within it. This weakens the idea that each of the phyla represents a distinct body plan.^[6]

Based upon this definition, which some say is unreasonably affected by the chance survival of rare groups, which vastly increase the size of phyla, representatives of many modern phyla did not appear until long after the Cambrian.^[7]

Lists[link]

Animal phyla[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Groups formerly ranked as phyla[link]

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Plant divisions[link]

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Fungal divisions[link]

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Bacterial Phyla/Divisions[link]

Currently there are 29 phyla accepted by LPSN^[11]

1. Acidobacteria, phenotipically diverse and mostly uncultured
2. Actinobacteria, High-G+C Gram positive species
3. Aquificae, only 14 thermophilic genera, deep branching
4. Bacteroidetes
5. Caldiserica, formerly candidate division OP5, Caldisericum exile is the sole representative
6. Chlamydiae, only 6 genera
7. Chlorobi, only 7 genera
8. Chloroflexi,
9. Chrysiogenetes, only 3 genera (Chrysiogenes arsenatis, Desulfurispira natronophila, Desulfurispirillum alkaliphilum)
10. Cyanobacteria, also known as the blue-green algae
11. Deferribacteres
12. Deinococcus-Thermus, Deinococcus radiodurans and Thermus aquaticus are "commonly known" species of this phyla
13. Dictyoglomi
14. Elusimicrobia, formerly candidate division Thermite Group 1
15. Fibrobacteres
16. Firmicutes, Low-G+C Gram positive species, such as the spore-formers Bacilli (aerobic) and Clostridia (anaerobic)
17. Fusobacteria
18. Gemmatimonadetes
19. Lentisphaerae, formerly clade VadinBE97
20. Nitrospira
21. Planctomycetes ANo ito?
22. Proteobacteria, the most known phyla, containing species such as Escherichia coli or Pseudomonas aeruginosa
23. Spirochaetes, species include Borrelia burgdorferi, which causes Lyme disease
24. Synergistetes
25. Tenericutes, alternatively class Mollicutes in phylum Firmicutes (notable genus: Mycoplasma)
26. Thermodesulfobacteria
27. Thermomicrobia
28. Thermotogae, deep branching
29. Verrucomicrobia

Archaeal Phyla/Division[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

1. Crenarchaeota, Second most common archaeal phylum
2. Euryarchaeota, most common archaeal phylum
3. Korarchaeota
4. Nanoarchaeota, ultra-small symbiotes
5. Thaumarchaeota

See also[link]

Biology portal

• Cladistics
• Phylogenetics
• Systematics
• Taxonomy

Notes[link]

1. ^ The term was coined by Georges Cuvier from Greek φῦλον phylon, "race, stock," related to φυλή phyle, "tribe, clan."

References[link]

External links[link]

• Are phyla "real"? Is there really a well-defined "number of animal phyla" extant and in the fossil record?
• Major Phyla Of Animals

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