A Single Authoritative List of the World’s Species: Background and Road Map

Taxonomy, or systematics, 1 is perhaps the most fundamental biological discipline – more or less all other realms of the life sciences, from molecular biology and genetics to physiology, morphology and ecology, depend in one way or another on taxonomic information. Among the first of the biological sciences to develop modern standards – to this day, we by and large follow the procedures standardised by Linnaeus in the 18th century – taxonomy was for a long time the core discipline of what is today called biology. However, taxonomy's appeal has waned. Other disciplines have taken the lead in biology, and most of the public funding with it. While support for these disciplines is well justified, taxonomy's wallflower image is not. Many biological disciplines still rely heavily on the classifications (and related understanding of the evolutionary relationships among taxa) provided by taxonomists. While less popular than it was, taxonomy remains a cutting-edge scientific discipline that uses the latest theoretically and technologically rigorous methods to bring order to the Tree of Life.