All 18 Taxonomy flashcards. Free.
The whole deck, not a sample — Taxonomy is 18 cards, which is no longer than the 30 we give away on every deck, so there is nothing left to charge for. 11 pages, US Letter, black and white. Grades 6–12.
No account, no email, no card details.
11 pages, and the backs are already right
Every front sheet is followed by its own back sheet with the rows reversed. Print double-sided, flip on the long edge, and answer number 7 is behind question number 7. Print a deck you built yourself, flip on the short edge, and every answer lands on the wrong card — which nobody finds out until sixty cards have been cut apart.
- 18 cards — counted out of the file, not rounded up
- Eight cards a sheet, with cut guides
- US Letter PDF, black and white, photocopier-friendly
- Print a set per student, every class, every year
18 cards — eight ranks is the whole ladder, plus the division/phylum split, the naming rules, the mnemonics and a worked example. There is nothing else in the topic to add without padding.
Every card here is cited to two independent sources
Two different organisations — not a standards body and a website reprinting it — and a script refuses the card if the two disagree, so the check runs on every card rather than on the ones somebody remembered to look at. A second specialist then re-verified this deck from sources of their own, without reading our citations first. A further 5,420 cards across 30 other decks were read end to end by a subject specialist instead, and we say which is which on every deck rather than averaging the two into one flattering word.
What 18 printed cards do that a screen does not
A phone deck is one card at a time. A printed deck is a pile you can split: the ones you know, the ones you nearly know, and the ones you keep missing. That third pile is the entire study session, and it is the thing a scrolling app hides from you.
- Print once, use all year. The licence covers a set per student, every class, every year.
- No device, no login, no data. Works in a cover lesson, on a bus, or at a kitchen table. Grades 6–12, filed under science.
- Change what you disagree with. Every card loads into the free maker on this site. Reword it, drop it, add your own, reprint.
Here are all 18 cards
Check them against your own textbook before you spend anything.
- The eight ranks of classification, broadest to narrowest
- Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species
- A mnemonic for the ranks
- King Philip Came Over For Good Soup — KPCOFGS; add a D word in front (Did, Dear) for Domain
- Domain
- Broadest rank, above kingdom — Bacteria, Archaea, Eukarya
- Is a kingdom the top of the hierarchy?
- No — since Woese, Kandler & Wheelis (1990) kingdoms sit inside three domains
- Kingdom
- Rank below domain, above phylum — the highest principal rank the botanical Code names
- Phylum
- Rank below kingdom, above class — e.g. Chordata; botanists may call this same rank a division
- Division
- The botanical name for the rank of phylum — the ICN reads 'division or phylum'
- Class
- Rank below phylum, above order — e.g. Mammalia
- Order
- Rank below class, above family — e.g. Primates
- Family
- Rank below order, above genus — e.g. Hominidae
- Genus
- Rank below family, above species; the capitalised first word of a binomial — e.g. Homo
- Species (as a rank)
- The basic rank. The species name is the whole binomial — Homo sapiens; the lowercase second word is the epithet
- Species (as a biological group)
- Organisms that interbreed and produce fertile offspring — the biological species concept
- How a scientific name is written
- Genus capitalised, species epithet lowercase, both italic — Homo sapiens
- Full classification of Homo sapiens
- Eukarya, Animalia, Chordata, Mammalia, Primates, Hominidae, Homo, Homo sapiens
- May the ranks be reordered?
- No — the relative order of ranks must not be altered; each rank nests inside the one above it
- Where subphylum, subclass and superfamily fit
- Extra ranks made by prefixing sub- or super-; each sits just below or above its principal rank
- Which code names animals, and which names plants?
- Animals — the ICZN; algae, fungi and plants — the ICN
Questions
- How do I print them double-sided?
- Double-sided, flip on the long edge. Every front sheet is followed by its own already-mirrored back sheet, so print them in the order they come and every answer lands on its own card.
- Can I edit the cards?
- Yes, and that is half the point. Once you own the deck, the "Buy & edit" button here opens all 18 cards in the free flash card maker on this site — reword a definition, delete the ones you do not teach, add your own, and print at anything from two to nine cards a page, rather than the fixed eight of the PDF.
- Can I print a set for every student?
- Yes. Personal and classroom licence: unlimited printing, every class you teach, every year you teach it. It does not cover reselling the file or passing it on to a colleague.
- What if I find a card that is wrong?
- Tell us and we fix it, and we publish what changed. We have withdrawn a whole deck from sale for being out of date rather than quietly patch it.
- Do I need an account?
- No. The file downloads straight away — no account, no email, no card details.