Cambridge (CIE) IGCSE Your notes

Biology
Characteristics, Classification & Features of
Organisms
Contents
Characteristics of Living Organisms
Concept & Uses of Classification Systems
Concept & Uses of Classification Systems Continued
Features of Organisms
Features of Organisms Continued

© 2025 Save My Exams, Ltd. Get more and ace your exams at savemyexams.com 1
 Characteristics of Living Organisms
Your notes
Characteristics of Living Organisms
Movement: an action by an organism or part of an organism causing a change of
position or place
Respiration: the chemical reactions that break down nutrient molecules in living cells to
release energy for metabolism
Sensitivity: the ability to detect or sense stimuli in the internal or external environment
and to make appropriate responses
Growth: a permanent increase in size and dry mass by an increase in cell number or cell
size or both
Reproduction: the processes that make more of the same kind of organism
Excretion: the removal from organisms of toxic materials, the waste products of
metabolism (chemical reactions in cells including respiration) and substances in excess
of requirements
Nutrition: the taking in of materials for energy, growth and development; plants require
light, carbon dioxide, water and ions; animals need organic compounds, ions and usually
need water

Examiner Tips and Tricks

Use this mnemonic to help you remember these processes:
MRS. GREN
Movement
Respiration
Sensitivity
Growth and development
Reproduction
Excretion
Nutrition

© 2025 Save My Exams, Ltd. Get more and ace your exams at savemyexams.com 2
 Concept & Uses of Classification Systems
Your notes
How Organisms are Classified
There are millions of species of organisms on Earth
A species is defined as a group of organisms that can reproduce to produce fertile
offspring
These species can be classified into groups by the features that they share e.g. all
mammals have bodies covered in hair, feed young from mammary glands and have
external ears (pinnas)

The Binomial System

Organisms were first classified by a Swedish naturalist called Linnaeus in a way that
allows the subdivision of living organisms into smaller and more specialised groups
The species in these groups have more and more features in common the more
subdivided they get
He named organisms in Latin using the binomial system where the scientific name of an
organism is made up of two parts starting with the genus (always given a capital letter)
and followed by the species (starting with a lower case letter)
When typed binomial names are always in italics (which indicates they are Latin) e.g.
Homo sapiens
The sequence of classification is: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus,
Species

© 2025 Save My Exams, Ltd. Get more and ace your exams at savemyexams.com 3
 Your notes

Linnaeus’s system of classification

Examiner Tips and Tricks

The order of classification can be remembered by using a mnemonic like:
KING PHILIP CAME OVER FOR GRAN’S SPAGHETTI

Dichotomous Keys
Keys are used to identify organisms based on a series of questions about their features
Dichotomous means ‘branching into two’ and it leads the user through to the name of
the organism by giving two descriptions at a time and asking them to choose
Each choice leads the user onto another two descriptions
In order to successfully navigate a key:

© 2025 Save My Exams, Ltd. Get more and ace your exams at savemyexams.com 4
1. You need to pick a single organism to start with, or you may be presented with an
unfamiliar one as part of an exam questions
Your notes
2. Follow the statements from the beginning. Each statement or question you should
be able to answer using the information provided in the question or an image given
as part of the question.
3. Eventually there will be no more statements or questions left and you will have the
name of the organism
4. You then pick another organism and start at the beginning of the key again,
repeating until all organisms are named

Example of a dichotomous key #1

© 2025 Save My Exams, Ltd. Get more and ace your exams at savemyexams.com 5
 Your notes

Example of a dichotomous key #2

Examiner Tips and Tricks

© 2025 Save My Exams, Ltd. Get more and ace your exams at savemyexams.com 6
Simple dichotomous keys almost always come up in the multiple choice paper, so
make sure you can use one.Very occasionally they show up in the theory paper, and
when they do you almost always have to use one instead of constructing one, so Your notes
focus on this rather than spending hours learning to construct them yourself!

© 2025 Save My Exams, Ltd. Get more and ace your exams at savemyexams.com 7
 Concept & Uses of Classification Systems Continued
Your notes
Reflecting Evolutionary Relationships: Extended
Extended Tier Only
Classification systems aim to reflect evolutionary relationships between species
Traditional biological classification systems grouped organisms based on
the features that they shared
If organisms shared more similar features then they were said to be more closely
related
In the past, scientists have encountered many difficulties when trying to determine
the evolutionary relationships of species based on this method
Using the physical features of species (such as colour/shape/size) has many
limitations and can often lead to the wrong classification of species

Using DNA to Classify Organisms: Extended

Extended Tier Only
Organisms share features because they originally descend from a common ancestor
Example: all mammals have bodies covered in hair, feed young from mammary glands
and have external ears (pinnas)
Originally, organisms were classified using morphology (the overall form and shape of
the organism, e.g. whether it had wings or legs) and anatomy (the detailed body
structure as determined by dissection)
As technology advanced, microscopes, knowledge of biochemistry and eventually
DNA sequencing allowed us to classify organisms using a more scientific approach
Studies of DNA sequences of different species show that the more similar the base
sequences in the DNA of two species, the more closely related those two species are
(and the more recent in time their common ancestor is)
This means that the base sequences in a mammal’s DNA are more closely related to all
other mammals than to any other vertebrate groups

© 2025 Save My Exams, Ltd. Get more and ace your exams at savemyexams.com 8
 DNA sequences can show how closely related different species are
The sequences above show that Brachinus armiger and Brachinus hirsutus are more Your notes
closely related than any other species in the list as their DNA sequences are identical
except for the last but one base (B.armiger has a T in that position whereas B.hirsutus has
an A)
As DNA base sequences are used to code for amino acid sequences in proteins, the
similarities in amino acid sequences can also be used to determine how closely related
organisms are

© 2025 Save My Exams, Ltd. Get more and ace your exams at savemyexams.com 9
 Features of Organisms
Your notes
The Five Kingdoms
The first division of living things in the classification system is to put them into one of five
kingdoms. They are:
Animals
Plants
Fungi
Protoctists
Prokaryotes
Main features of all animals:
they are multicellular
their cells contain a nucleus but no cell walls or chloroplasts
they feed on organic substances made by other living things

A typical animal cell

Main features of all plants:
they are multicellular
their cells contain a nucleus, chloroplasts and cellulose cell walls
they all feed by photosynthesis

© 2025 Save My Exams, Ltd. Get more and ace your exams at savemyexams.com 10
 Your notes

A typical plant cell

The Animal Kingdom

Several main features are used to place organisms into groups within the animal
kingdom

Vertebrates
All vertebrates have a backbone
There are 5 classes of vertebrates
Vertebrate Table

© 2025 Save My Exams, Ltd. Get more and ace your exams at savemyexams.com 11
 Your notes

© 2025 Save My Exams, Ltd. Get more and ace your exams at savemyexams.com 12
 Your notes

Vertebrate classification
Invertebrates
Invertebrates do not possess a backbone
One of the morphological characteristics used to classify invertebrates is whether they
have legs or not
All invertebrates with jointed legs are part of the arthropod phylum
They are classified further into the following groups:
Arthropod groups table

© 2025 Save My Exams, Ltd. Get more and ace your exams at savemyexams.com 13
 Your notes

Arthropod classification

Examiner Tips and Tricks

Make sure that you are aware of the distinction between the main features of a group
of organisms and the defining features of a group:
An exam question might ask you to state the main features of a group of
organisms; these are given above, and some of these main features are shared
between the groups, e.g. all of the vertebrates have a backbone, and all of the
arthropods have segmented bodies

© 2025 Save My Exams, Ltd. Get more and ace your exams at savemyexams.com 14
It is also possible that an exam question might ask you to give a defining feature
of one of these groups, i.e. a feature that sets a group apart from the other
groups, e.g. mammals have fur while the other vertebrates do not, and Your notes
crustaceans have 2 pairs of antennae while this is not the case for the other
groups of arthropods

© 2025 Save My Exams, Ltd. Get more and ace your exams at savemyexams.com 15
 Features of Organisms Continued
Your notes
The Five Kingdoms: Extended
Extended Tier Only
The first division of living things in the classification system is to put them into one of five
kingdoms
They are:
Animals
Plants
Fungi
Protoctists
Prokaryotes
Main features of all fungi (e.g. moulds, mushrooms, yeast)
usually multicellular
cells have nuclei and cell walls not made from cellulose
do not photosynthesize but feed by saprophytic (on dead or decaying material) or
parasitic (on live material) nutrition

© 2025 Save My Exams, Ltd. Get more and ace your exams at savemyexams.com 16
 A typical fungal cell
Main features of all Protoctists (e.g. Amoeba, Paramecium, Plasmodium) Your notes
most are unicellular but some are multicellular
all have a nucleus, some may have cell walls and chloroplasts
meaning some protoctists photosynthesise and some feed on organic
substances made by other living things

Two examples of protoctist cells

Main features of all Prokaryotes (bacteria, blue-green algae)
often unicellular
cells have cell walls (not made of cellulose) and cytoplasm but no nucleus or
mitochondria

© 2025 Save My Exams, Ltd. Get more and ace your exams at savemyexams.com 17
 Your notes

A typical bacterial cell

The Plant Kingdom: Extended

Extended Tier Only
At least some parts of any plant are green, caused by the presence of the pigment
chlorophyll which absorbs energy from sunlight for the process of photosynthesis
The plant kingdom includes organisms such as ferns and flowering plants

Ferns
Have leaves called fronds
Do not produce flowers but instead reproduce by spores produced on the underside of
fronds

© 2025 Save My Exams, Ltd. Get more and ace your exams at savemyexams.com 18
 Your notes

Ferns

Ferns reproduce by spores found in the underside of their fronds

Flowering plants
Reproduce sexually by means of flowers and seeds
Seeds are produced inside the ovary found at the base of the flower
Can be divided into two groups – monocotyledons and dicotyledons

© 2025 Save My Exams, Ltd. Get more and ace your exams at savemyexams.com 19
 Your notes

Wheat plants are monocotyledons

Sunflowers are dicotyledons

How do you distinguish between monocotyledons and
dicotyledons?
Flowers
Flowers from monocotyledons contain petals in multiples of 3 while flowers from
dicotyledons contain petals in multiples of 4 or 5
Leaves
Leaves from monocotyledons have parallel leaf veins while leaves from
dicotyledons have reticulated leaf veins
Reticulated = form a web-like network throughout the leaf

© 2025 Save My Exams, Ltd. Get more and ace your exams at savemyexams.com 20
 Leaves from monocotyledons are narrow and grass-like while leaves from
dicotyledons tend to have broader leaves that come in a wide range of shapes
Your notes

Comparing monocots and dicots

Examiner Tips and Tricks

Identification of monocotyledons and dicotyledons comes up fairly frequently in the
multiple choice paper and so it is worth learning the two differences between their
flowers and leaves.

Viruses: Extended
Extended Tier Only
Viruses are not part of any classification system as they are not considered living things
They do not carry out the seven life processes for themselves, instead they take over a
host cell’s metabolic pathways in order to make multiple copies of themselves
Virus structure is simply genetic material (RNA or DNA) inside a protein coat

© 2025 Save My Exams, Ltd. Get more and ace your exams at savemyexams.com 21
 Your notes

Structure of a typical virus

© 2025 Save My Exams, Ltd. Get more and ace your exams at savemyexams.com 22