Project
- Field of research: Taxonomy
- Disciplines involved: Botany, Zoology, Mycology, Phycology
- Innovative activities: Developing a comprehensive global governance mechanism for aggregating global taxonomic lists
- Impacts on education: Provides an example of interdisciplinary collaboration as a way to tackle and resolve a particularly complex problem with far-reaching consequences for various scientific and non-scientific fields.
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Questions/ issues addressed by the project
Competing taxonomies cause confusion and inefficiencies among many users of the science. Our primary question is therefore whether a global mechanism for the governance of taxonomic lists can be developed through discussion among taxonomists and users that provides legitimacy, consistency and clarity to users of taxonomic lists while continuing to foster innovation in taxonomic science itself.
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Outcomes expected
The project expects to strengthen existing institutions attempting to seamlessly coordinate taxonomic lists so that a comprehensive taxonomic list of the world's diversity is available to, and adopted by, major users of taxonomy across the globe such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and its subsidiary agreements. Ultimately, it is likely that such a list would also be adopted at other international levels, and nationally because it would, through merit, become the world standard.
- Leaders: Stephen Garnett, Les Christidis, Frank Zachos, Stijn Conix, Kevin Thiele, Mark Costello
- IUBS National Committees involved in the project: Australia, Germany, New Zealand, Russia
- IUBS Scientific Member Organisations involved in the project:
- International Commission on Bionomenclature
- International Ornithological Union