Meeting Abstract
Nomenclature and taxonomy are complementary aspects of the study of biodiversity. However, the two are often confused even by biologists. Taxonomy is the science of identifying, describing, and determining relationships of organisms from species to higher taxa. Nomenclature is a system of giving names to organisms based on rules established for the process. European exploration from the 15th through the 18th centuries resulted in the accumulation of a wealth of new organisms to be named and described by naturalists. While adoption of a system of binomial nomenclature in the last half of the 19th century helped speed up the process, by the middle of the 19th century the turmoil resulting from differences in taxonomists’ procedures and philosophies meant it was necessary for codes of nomenclature to be developed to regulate the process of naming. By the early 20th century International Codes of Nomenclature were in place for plants (ICBN) and animals (ICZN). These codes worked reasonably well through most of the 20th century, but the rapid development of electronic communications and publication at the end of the century resulted in pressure to revise the codes of nomenclature to allow for partly or all electronic publication in the hope of speeding up description of new taxa in what was rapidly becoming an age of biological extinction. This has been accomplished for the Zoological and Botanical Codes. For example, ZooBank, begun in 2008, had registered 188,908 nomenclatural acts in 80,817 publications by 50,070 authors as of Sept. 5th, 2017. Consistent unambiguous names are the tools on which biological research and conservation practices are built. As we pursue the goals of documenting and conserving biodiversity for which stable nomenclature is essential, we must do so without restricting the freedom of taxonomy.
