[Taxacom] Taxonomy in Europe in the 21st century

[Gael Lancelot]

Dear TAXACOMers,

As we all know, taxonomy is at a crossroads. As the most fundamental of 
life sciences, is more vital than ever to our understanding and 
management of biodiversity. Societal changes and new technologies 
currently lead to fast and deep-ranging transformations in taxonomic 
science.

To plan for the future, the European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy 
has gathered prominent researchers in the relevant fields as well as 
young scientists, all with an established production of excellent 
research. They have produced a scientific vision for the future of 
taxonomy in the next 10 to 20 years. This report, *“Taxonomy in Europe 
in the 21^st Century”,* is now released for discussion in the scientific 
community and general public. It is available at the following address: 
http://ww2.bgbm.org/EditDocumentRepository/Taxonomy21report.pdf

The overall conclusions of the report are:

    * That taxonomy faces exciting challenges and opportunities in the
      future to meet the demand for an ever more profound understanding
      of the diversity of life on this planet, how it developed and the
      impact of increasingly destructive human activity including
      climate change, factors that are predicted to have an enormous
      negative influence on the diversity and distribution of
      biodiversity (the biodiversity crisis)
    * Pivotal to the development of taxonomy are the rapidly expanding
      fields of high throughput DNA sequencing, automated digital
      data-gathering and biodiversity informatics. Incorporating these
      technologies will be critical to the science of taxonomy.
    * Scientific collaborators and users of taxonomy will require new
      ways of working and interacting with taxonomists. It is essential
      that taxonomists and their users respond to this need. Taxonomists
      integrated into interdisciplinary teams will be an essential way
      of working.
    * Although an ever expanding repertoire of theoretical and practical
      tools is available to taxonomists, unheralded in the history of
      the subject, there will have to be substantial, even radical,
      changes in how taxonomy is done and its supporting infrastructure
      operated, to exploit these opportunities to the full. “Business as
      usual”, even if scaled up, is simply not an option.

The Board of Directors of EDIT, representing 27 major taxonomic 
institutions in and outside Europe, has approved this document as a 
scientific roadmap for future development of taxonomy in research, 
training and technology in the coming decades.

More information on EDIT is available at http://e-taxonomy.eu 
<http://e-taxonomy.eu/>. Any questions or reactions will be welcome at 
lancelot at mnhn.fr <mailto:lancelot at mnhn.fr>.

Thank you,

-- 
Gaël Lancelot
Communication Officer
European Institute of Taxonomy
Tel: (0033)1 40 79 80 19
lancelot at mnhn.fr
http://e-taxonomy.eu