Folk taxonomy

Folk taxonomies are systems of categorization created by non-scientists in order to organize, name, and understand the natural world. Folk taxonomies frequently diverge on some points from the phylogeny established by the scientific study of taxonomy but they also tend to align with scientific classifications on other points: sometimes folk taxonomies lump together many biological species under a single name, sometimes there is one-to-one correspondence, and sometimes folk taxonomies differentiate where scientific taxonomies do not. The differentiation between types in folk taxonomies is largely dependent on the cultural significance and practical utility of the species constituting each group.