You probably recall from high school that creatures are classified using the taxonomy of Kingdom-Phylum-Class-Order-Family-Genus-Species. My teacher taught me to remember this with the phrase “kings played chess on fat green stools”. For some reason it stuck.
This taxonomy applies to bacteria as well. The various taxonomic information can be analogized to an address, as shown above.
When describing bacterial communities, we often group them by phylum. This is a very large range. For example, fish and dogs both exist in the same phylum.
In general, we see bacteria having two names, such as Escherichia Coli. This nomenclature signifies Genus-Species.