Final answer:
Connective tissues are divided into loose connective tissue with loosely organized fibers, and dense connective tissue with tightly packed collagen fibers, which can be either regular or irregular.
Step-by-step explanation:
The two main categories of connective tissues are loose connective tissue and dense connective tissue. Loose connective tissue, as the name suggests, has fibers that are loosely organized, which results in large spaces between the fibers. This type of tissue includes adipose tissue, areolar tissue, and reticular tissue. On the other hand, dense connective tissue contains more tightly packed collagen fibers, offering greater resistance to stretching.
Dense connective tissue can be further categorized into dense regular and dense irregular types. The former has fibers aligned parallel, providing strong, rope-like structures such as ligaments and tendons. Dense irregular connective tissue has fibers that are interwoven, which allows for resistance in multiple directions found in organ capsules and skin.