Monera of Iowa

The kingdom Monera includes bacteria and blue-green algae. Living things in this group are single-celled organisms with no nuclear membrane, no chloroplasts, and no mitochondria.

Volumes have been written about bacteria and blue-green algae. In fact, scientists have done a lot of work with organisms in this group. Yet fundamentally, scientists have no real understanding of how many species there are. In fact, the species concept even breaks down when attempting to study this group.

Organisms within this group have been studied in Iowa, but there is no Iowa list that I am aware of.

I did a google search and plugged in the words "Iowa" and "monera" and ran across an interesting web site by someone named Bernard Pelletier. His web site can be found here: http://empirebiota.info/Home_Page.php He is proposing a 13 kingdom system. I believe the generally accepted system now includes 5 kingdoms. This system of classification originated in the 1970's.

How the entire system of life is classified is beyond the scope of this web site. In fact, it is way above my pay grade. But it does go to show that all is not settled in the field of biology.

The Iowa connection was our friend, Mr. Henry S. Conard, who proposed a three kingdom system in 1939. You will remember him if you saw the mosses page.

The reference for Mr. Conard's 3 kingdom system is:

Conard, H. S. 1939. Plants of Iowa (Grinnell Flora 5th ed.). Iowa Acad Sci., Biol. Surv. Publ. 2, 1-92.