Help! What kingdom and phylum do microbes belong to? - (Oct/11/2006 )

What kingdom and phylum do microbes (specifically the influenza A virus) belong to? I've been looking all over for them, but I can't find out where they belong

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Young one, you are faced with a creature that is not a member of the living world! (Ominous sound effects) And so thus can not be classified with any members of the living world....

Influenza A is a virus. And like all viruses, it has no life. No life of its own except that which it steals from others. (More SFX)

However, that has not stopped us from attempting to classify the none living. Lookup the pages of “Negative sense ssRNA, Orthomyxoviridae” And there you will find the influenza A. (Still more SFX)

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thanks! i never knew they were nonliving.

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Ha ha. Class.

Yeah, viruses fall between the cracks in taxonomic classification. They've been variously described by folk trying to shoehorn them in somewhere and have even been described as "sometimes life", which isn't very helpful. The fact that they need an organism's metabolism to function has gone against their case for being alive. Sheer discrimination and one of the reasons why viruses are pathogenic - it's their form of civil unrest.
I know several adenoviruses who are incensed that Frankenstein's monster was classified as "alive!". "why, it was nothing more than an undead brute", my pal the Tobacco mosaic virus said to me yesterday.

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