PLOS BIOLOGY
Citation: Garnett ST, Christidis L, Conix S, Costello MJ, Zachos FE, Bánki OS, et al. (2020) Principles for creating a single authoritative list of the world's species. PLoS Biol 18(7): e3000736. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000736
Published: July 7, 2020
Copyright: © 2020 Garnett et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: Authors SG, LC, SC, MC, KT, FZ received funding from the International Union for Biological Sciences (http://www.iubs.org) to run a workshop reviewing the principles described in the paper as part of the IUBS programme "Governance of Global Taxonomic Lists." SC's involvement was funded by the Flemish Research Council Grant 3H200026. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. All other authors received no specific funding for this work.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist
Abbreviations: CBD, Convention on Biological Diversity; CDU, Charles Darwin University; CITES, Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora; CMS, Convention
PERSPECTIVE
Principles for creating a single authoritative list of the world's species
Stephen T. Garnett[1][*], Les Christidis[2], Stijn Conix[3], Mark J. Costello[4][5], Frank E. Zachos[6][7][8], Olaf S. Bánki[9], Yiming Bao[10], Saroj K. Barik[11], John S. Buckeridge[12][13], Donald Hobern[14], Aaron Lien[15][16], Narelle Montgomery[17][18], Svetlana Nikolaeva[19][20], Richard L. Pyle[21], Scott A. Thomson[22], Peter Paul van Dijk[23], Anthony Whalen[17], Zhi-Qiang Zhang[24], Kevin R. Thiele[25]
1 Research Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods, Charles Darwin University, Darwin, Australia, 2 Southern Cross University, Coffs Harbour, Australia, 3 Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, 4 School of Environment, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand, 5 Faculty of Biosciences and Aquaculture, Nord University, Bodø, Norway, 6 Natural History Museum Vienna, Vienna, Austria, 7 Department of Evolutionary Biology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria, 8 Department of Genetics, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa, 9 Species 2000, Naturalis, Leiden, the Netherlands, 10 National Genomics Data Center, Beijing Institute of Genomics (China National Center for Bioinformation), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, 11 CSIR-National Botanical Research Institute, Rana Pratap Marg, Lucknow, India, 12 Earth & Oceanic Systems Group, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia, 13 Museums Victoria, Carlton, Australia, 14 Species 2000, Canberra, Australia, 15 School of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Arizona, Arizona, United States of America, 16 Arizona Institutes for Resilience, University of Arizona, Arizona, United States of America, 17 Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, Canberra, Australia, 18 Sessional Committee, Scientific Council, Convention on Migratory Species, Bonn, Germany, 19 Department of Earth Sciences, The Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom, 20 Kazan Federal University, Kazan, Russia, 21 B. P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawai'i, United States of America, 22 Chelonian Research Institute, Oviedo, Florida, United States of America, 23 Global Wildlife Conservation, Austin, Texas, United States of America, 24 Manaaki Whenua-Landcare Research and School of Biological Sciences, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand, 25 Taxonomy Australia, Australian Academy of Science, Canberra, Australia
Abstract
Lists of species underpin many fields of human endeavour, but there are currently no universally accepted principles for deciding which biological species should be accepted when there are alternative taxonomic treatments (and, by extension, which scientific names should be applied to those species). As improvements in information technology make it easier to communicate, access, and aggregate biodiversity information, there is a need for a framework that helps taxonomists and the users of taxonomy decide which taxa and names should be used by society whilst continuing to encourage taxonomic research that leads to new species discoveries, new knowledge of species relationships, and the refinement of existing species concepts. Here, we present 10 principles that can underpin such a governance framework, namely (i) the species list must be based on science and free from nontaxonomic considerations and interference, (ii) governance of the species list must aim for community support and use, (iii) all decisions about list composition must be transparent, (iv) the governance of validated lists of species is separate from the governance of the names of taxa, (v) governance of lists of accepted species must not constrain academic freedom, (vi) the set of criteria considered sufficient to recognise species boundaries may appropriately vary between different taxonomic groups but should be consistent when
PLOS Biology | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000736 July 7, 2020
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