Gattungs

Gattungs is not a standalone term in modern biological taxonomy; it is generally understood as a grammatical inflection of the noun Gattung in German, which means genus. The standard forms are Gattung (singular) and Gattungen (plural). When discussing taxonomy, German texts typically use Gattung to refer to the rank and Gattungen to refer to multiple genera. Any occurrence of the form Gattungs is usually a grammatical variant or a nonstandard rendering rather than a separate concept.

In biology, a genus (Gattung) is a rank used to group species that are closely related and share a number of distinguishing features. The genus sits above the species level and below the family. A genus may contain one species (monotypic) or many species, all of which are believed to share a common ancestor. A key concept within a genus is the type species, which anchors the genus name to a concrete lineage and serves as the reference point for taxonomic circumscription.

Nomenclature and rules are governed by formal codes: the ICZN for animals and the ICN (formerly the ICNCP) for plants. Genus names are Latinized, capitalized, and typically italicized in scientific writing. They are used in binomial nomenclature, where the genus name is the first part of the species’ scientific name (for example, Panthera leo, where Panthera is the genus and leo the species).

Beyond pure biology, Gattung also appears in a broader German sense to denote a genre, kind, or style in literature, music, and art. This broader usage reflects the idea of grouping entities by shared characteristics, rather than a strict scientific taxonomic rank.