I’m fiddling with a card game concept, and a very important part of it is creatures interacting with other specific kinds of creatures. This necessarily means I need to come up with lots of type names that are descriptive but vague enough to shove literally anything in them. Here’s some good examples: “bug” containing ants, shrimps, pillbugs, bees, and literally anything that could be called a creepy crawly; “fish” containing everything from salmon to sharks to eels to octopi; “trees” containing all the stuff you are thinking of as well as those precambrian 6-foot fungi pillars; and “cats” including housecats, big cats, cheetah, and carcals.
And that’s everything I can think of that would be useful. You see my problem? I know there are other casual-usage words for big categories of critters, but my grasp of the Enlgish language is fickle and leaves me whenever it is most inconvenient. If there is a list I could work from, that would be very helpful. Otherwise, volunteer as many words as you think would be useful.
Collective noun might be the word you’re looking for. This list is for animals in particular.