Algae for kingdom

Aisling Irwin and Juliet Vickery report from the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Birmingham.

The natural world should be reclassified into as many as ten kingdoms rather than the traditional two of animals and plants, the British Association was told this week. A better classification system would reflect the fact that much of the earth's life is made up of organisms that most of us ignore and that do not easily fit into the definition "plant" or "animal".

David Williams, of the Natural History Museum in London, told the Birmingham meeting that a better criterion would demote plants and animals to just two kingdoms among many. An example of the problems of classification arises from recent research on the genetics of brown algae, which include the brown seaweeds as well as tiny single celled organisms. "This research reveals them to be some sort of animal plant hybrid," he said. Yet at present algae are lumped into the plant category.