What is taxonomy?

Taxonomy refers to the naming system used to describe all living organisms. Organisms are classified according to different levels: domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species, and strain. You can think of these taxonomic descriptions as Russian nesting dolls where domain is the largest and strain is the smallest.

Microbial names usually include genus and species information, such as Bifidobacterium (genus name) infantis (species name) or Candida albicans, which may be abbreviated as B. infantis or C. albicans, respectively.