- prokaryote models:
- E. Coli: the most well studied
- mycoplasma: a very minimal genus, notable species: Mycoplasma genitalium
- eukaryote
- S. cerevisiae: simplest eukaryote model. Unicellular.
- C. elegans: simplest multicellular organism model
- vertebrate:
- Zebrafish: simplest vertebrate model
- mammal:
- Mus musculus: simplest mammal model
Naming taxonomic ranks like genus, domain, etc. is a fucking waste of time, only useful before we developed molecular biology.
All that matters is the tree of clades with examples of species in each clade, and common characteristics shared by the clade.
And with molecular biology, we can build those trees incredibly well for extant species. When extinct species are involved however, things get more complicated.