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Species lists are widely used in legislation and regulation to manage and conserve biodiversity. In this paper, we explore the issues caused by the lack of an adequately governed and universally accepted list of the world’s species. These include lack of quality control, duplicated effort, conflicts of interest, lack of currency, and confusion in the scientific use of taxonomic information. If species lists are to fulfill their role efficiently, then the governance systems underlying their creation must keep pace. Fortunately, modernization of species list governance is now possible as a result of advances in biodiversity informatics and two decades of experience working to create the backbone of a global species list.

Despite the important role that species names play in multiple fields, there is no globally complete list of known and described species. This lack is a result simultaneously of the complexity of planetary biodiversity, the long history of naming species in publications from all over the world, the small number of taxonomists working on many important groups, the rapid and dynamic change in knowledge for a few well-studied groups, and the limited incentives for researchers to curate such lists. Recent papers have proposed that a more formal governance mechanism is needed to assist with the translation of taxonomic knowledge to user communities. The recommendation is for the taxonomic community to assist user groups by maintaining reviewed lists that reflect as far as possible consensus among practising taxonomists and incorporating new insights and understanding as these become widely accepted within the relevant taxonomic community. The Catalogue of Life (COL) is the most significant international partnership working to deliver a list of all species by engaging a broad network of taxonomists and databases to contribute expert-curated lists for different taxonomic groups. COL, which included 1,908,823 species as of May 2021, has great experience with developing such a list across all taxonomic groups and has been modernising its processes and tools since 2017 to reflect best practice in management of large digital information assets. This paper explores the alignment between the current state and directions of COL and the initiative to improve the governance of species lists.

Governance is the act of governing or organizing, that is a system of rules, norms, or shared strategies to guide or regulate the actions of the governed. Since the initial development of Linnaean taxonomy, a diversity of approaches have been adopted for critical taxonomic decisions, introducing pluralism to taxonomic principles and resulting in disagreements about the development of species lists. These disagreements are in part a product of the fragmented governance structure that has developed for the creation of taxonomic lists. To address these challenges and achieve the goal of a single, accepted list of life on Earth, a new governance structure for the development of taxonomic lists is needed. Here, we introduce three high-level categories of governance structure—fragmentation, monocentric governance, and polycentric governance—which differ in the way decision-making power is distributed and coordinated. We then show the problems caused by the fragmented governance structure currently in place for the development of taxonomic lists and consider the potential for a new approach grounded in either monocentric or polycentric governance. Both monocentric and polycentric approaches have the potential to address the problems inherent in the existing fragmented system. Ultimately, the best governance system for taxonomic lists will be the one that the taxonomic community is prepared to accept.

Taxonomy—the delimitation, naming, classification and documentation of species and other taxa—is an often-misunderstood discipline. Complex and at times contested, taxonomy occupies a sometimes discomforting intermediate position on a continuum from descriptive to hypothetico-deductive science. Two aspects of taxonomy that are striking to many observers and users are the degree to which taxonomists often disagree, and the degree of taxonomic revisionism (the replacement of one taxonomic classification with another, exemplified by the phrase ‘taxonomists are always changing the names of things’). Disagreements between taxonomists do not usually indicate taxonomic confusion or chaos, but rather often represent valid disagreements over the best, most effective and most meaningful way to interpret, describe and classify one of the most complex systems that scientists seek to describe and characterise—the patterns of variation of life on Earth. One way to partially manage disagreements among taxonomists is to develop a mechanism to synthesise the flux of taxonomic activity into agreed, broadly accepted, authoritative and scientifically robust global lists of the world’s species and other taxa. A sound understanding of some aspects of the nature of taxonomy is needed to appreciate the opportunities, complexities and limitations of the development and maintenance of such lists.

There is currently no reliable geochemical proxy of historical coral bleaching. Here we test the hypothesis that increases in the nitrogen isotopic signature of coral tissue, which is recorded in skeletal-bound organic material (CS-δ15N), can be used to detect coral bleaching events in the past. We measured CS-δ15N in coral colonies that showed high density thermal stress bands associated with the 1998 and 2002 mass bleaching events on the central Great Barrier Reef. Analysis of coral cores from 2 inshore and 1 mid-shelf reef found that increases in CS-δ15N occurred either side of the thermal stress events and were therefore unlikely to be a physiological response to bleaching. We then assessed whether CS-δ15N could be used to detect shelf-wide upwelling, which has been previously shown to coincide with mass bleaching events. For the inshore sites the response of CS-δ15N to upwelling was not uniform between reefs or between colonies from the same reef. However, on the mid-shelf reef, increased CS-δ15N during the known upwelling of 1998 was more consistent between cores. Analysis of a 23-year old coral core from the mid-shelf reef showed increased CS-δ15N between 1983–1985 and 1997–2000, periods where strong El Nino events were proceeded by intense wind-driven upwelling. We conclude that coral CS-δ15N is not a direct proxy for coral bleaching but can be used to detect prolonged and pervasive upwelling that coincides with mass bleaching events. Further validation with longer core records is required.

Failure to consider genetic structure in fish populations when collecting aquaculture broodstock can negatively affect fitness, and hence conservation and management goals. Here we used mitochondrial DNA from the 5’ end of the control region (D-loop) and four microsatellite markers to evaluate population genetic structure in the Mangrove Jack Lutjanus argentimaculatus with a view to guiding broodstock collection at the southern extremity of its east Australian range. There was no evidence of genetic structure within the entire tropical, subtropical and temperate east Australian distribution of L. argentimaculatus. Although this species may exhibit clinal morphological and life-history variation at its southern range limit, we did not detect wide- or fine-scale spatial genetic structure to indicate the presence of non-random evolutionary processes. Broodstock collection of L. argentimaculatus need not be geographically restricted in eastern Australia, but fisheries management should consider variation in life history and recruitment success at the species’ edge.

ispartof: ORGANISMS DIVERSITY & EVOLUTION vol:21 issue:4 pages:657-675 status: published

A global consensus list of the world’s species must be based on the best available taxonomic research, and its contents should not be biased towards certain political or social aims. At the same time, users of any global list must be involved or consulted in its establishment to ensure that the list meets their needs. This paper argues that while these two desiderata— independence and inclusion—might seem to be in conflict, they are in fact compatible. More precisely, it suggests the roles taxonomists and users could play in establishing and maintaining a global consensus list to make sure that this list is both inclusive and independent.

In a recently published paper, Taylor and colleagues discussed different approaches and interpretations of mammalian taxonomy and their bearing on more general issues such as conservation and evolutionary biology. We fully endorse the fundamental importance of taxonomy and its being grounded on scientific principles. However, we also deplore a lack of awareness in the literature of the fact that taxonomy is a twofold enterprise that encompasses not only (i) the scientific description and quantitative analysis of biodiversity but also (ii) an executive decision as to how the results of (i) are translated into names. This has serious ramifications for the conservation of our planet’s dwindling biodiversity and when taxonomic names are used as raw data for ecological and evolutionary analyses.

Wildlife translocations are gaining acceptance as a valuable conservation tool for threatened Australian fauna. The 2019–2020 bushfire crisis has significantly affected koala habitat across four states, and translocations, when properly implemented, could facilitate the demographic and genetic recovery of affected populations. Current translocation policies lack an appropriate spatial framework to guide conservation actions and this could lead to unexpected or undesirable outcomes with the potential to hinder population recovery. To address these concerns, we propose development of a spatial framework based on knowledge of population genetic structure and population-specific dispersal patterns estimated from molecular data. At an operational level, application of a spatial genetic framework obviates the need to specify restrictive translocation limits, reduces reliance on subjective interpretations of population structure, and provides the potential to improve translocation success and conservation outcomes. We strongly encourage implementation of a spatial genetic framework and its integration into the decision-making process for selection and prioritisation of release sites for translocated koalas by wildlife carers, researchers and wildlife managers. The proposed framework would also support koala conservation and management more broadly.

Whole-genome sequencing projects are increasingly populating the tree of life and characterizing biodiversity1–4. Sparse taxon sampling has previously been proposed to confound phylogenetic inference5, and captures only a fraction of the genomic diversity. Here we report a substantial step towards the dense representation of avian phylogenetic and molecular diversity, by analysing 363 genomes from 92.4% of bird families—including 267 newly sequenced genomes produced for phase II of the Bird 10,000 Genomes (B10K) Project. We use this comparative genome dataset in combination with a pipeline that leverages a reference-free whole-genome alignment to identify orthologous regions in greater numbers than has previously been possible and to recognize genomic novelties in particular bird lineages. The densely sampled alignment provides a single-base-pair map of selection, has more than doubled the fraction of bases that are confidently predicted to be under conservation and reveals extensive patterns of weak selection in predominantly non-coding DNA. Our results demonstrate that increasing the diversity of genomes used in comparative studies can reveal more shared and lineage-specific variation, and improve the investigation of genomic characteristics. We anticipate that this genomic resource will offer new perspectives on evolutionary processes in cross-species comparative analyses and assist in efforts to conserve species., A dataset of the genomes of 363 species from the Bird 10,000 Genomes Project shows increased power to detect shared and lineage-specific variation, demonstrating the importance of phylogenetically diverse taxon sampling in whole-genome sequencing.

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 possible, (vii) a global list must balance conflicting needs for currency and stability by having archived versions, (viii) contributors need appropriate recognition, (ix) list content should be traceable, and (x) a global listing process needs both to encompass global diversity and to accommodate local knowledge of that diversity. We conclude by outlining issues that must be resolved if such a system of taxonomic list governance and a unified list of accepted scientific names generated are to be universally adopted., Currently there are no rules on compiling lists of accepted names of species, meaning that many people use a variety of competing lists, which results in confusion and inefficiencies. This Perspective article provides principles for developing global lists of species that are needed if such lists are to be accepted by both taxonomists and users of taxonomy.