Towards a global list of accepted species
A recent topical collection in ‘Organisms, Diversity & Evolution’ discusses why a broadly used and accepted global list of species is desirable, which hurdles we have to overcome to get such a list, and how we might do that. We were involved in the following papers in this topical collection (all free to download!):
1) Why taxonomists sometimes disagree, and why this matters
2) Consequences of inadequate taxonomic list governance
3) Independence and stakeholder inclusion
4) Overcoming fragmentation in the governance of taxonomic lists
5) The devil is in the detail
Principles for creating a single authoritative list of the world’s species
Stephen T. Garnett , Les Christidis, Stijn Conix, Mark J. Costello, Frank E. Zachos, Olaf S. Bánki, Yiming Bao, Saroj K. Barik, John S. Buckeridge, Donald Hobern, Aaron Lien, Narelle Montgomery, Svetlana Nikolaeva, Richard L. Pyle, Scott A. Thomson, Peter Paul van Dijk, Anthony Whalen, Zhi-Qiang Zhang & Kevin R. Thiele in PLoS Biology.
This paper proposes 10 principles that could underpin a governance framework for creating and maintaining a single list of the world’s species.
Against Natural Kind Eliminativism
Stijn Conix & Pei-Shan Chi in Synthese
This paper argues that the notion of natural kinds plays a useful role in philosophical research about scientific classification.
Enzyme Classification and the Entanglement of Values and Epistemic Standards
Stijn Conix in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A
This paper argues that there are many unforced methodological decisions in research on the classification of enzymes, and that the value-judgments required for making these unforced decisions substantially influence the outcome of the research.
Onenigheid over soorten: Het bijna onoplosbare probleem van taxonomische wanorde
Stijn Conix, Tom Artois & Andreas De Block in Natuur.Focus
Paper in dutch introducing taxonomic disorder and its implications to a broad audience of biodiversity enthusiasts.
Taxonomic Disorder 