| Description | This is the second level of taxonomic terms, child to superfamily. For Bacteria, there are 24 phyla as well as an unclassified bacteria catchall. Well-known phyla include Actinobacteria, Firmicutes and Proteobacteria. For Archaea there are only four phyla including the Crenarchaeota and Euryarchaeota plus the unclassified category. For Eukaryota there are 28 immediate sub-categories, many of which are intermediate classifications between the level of phylum and superkingdom such as kingdom, and superphylum. The number of phyla is quite large and includes familliar terms such as Ascidomycota (in the kingdom Fungi) and Mollusca (in the kingdom Metazoa). In the case of some lineages, the taxonomic term phylum is not used. For the puposes of genome properties, this rank will be occupied by the name of the term which is the parent of the Class term. |
