Characteristics of Living Things Quiz

Characteristics of Living Organisms

• One characteristic shared by all living things is the ability to grow and develop.
• Growth involves a permanent increase in size and mass in living organisms.

Nutrition and Energy

• Organisms that make their own food using energy from sunlight are called autotrophs.
• Organisms that cannot make their own food and consume others instead are called heterotrophs.

Reproduction

• The characteristic that involves the process of making more of the same kind of organism is called reproduction.

Cell Structure

• Organisms made up of more than one cell are called multicellular organisms.

Classification of Living Organisms

• The process of grouping living things based on their similarities is called taxonomy.
• Taxonomists consider fossils and comparative anatomy to reveal the evolutionary relationships of organisms.
• Biologists classify organisms into different categories based on their shared characteristics.
• The science of naming, identifying, and classifying organisms is known as taxonomy.
• The internal and external structures of living organisms influence their classification.

History of Taxonomy

• Carl Linnaeus is known as the father of taxonomy.
• The three domains into which biologists divide the diversity of life are Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukarya.
• In the Linnaean classification system, the phylum is ranked immediately below the kingdom.
• The Greek philosopher Aristotle developed the first widely accepted biological classification systems.
• The term for the process of arranging various organisms into successive levels of biological classification is taxonomy.

Test your knowledge of the fundamental properties shared by all living things, including the cellular structure and energy requirements. Explore the concepts of unicellular and multi-cellular organisms, as well as the diverse sources of energy utilized by different organisms.