Linnaeus' Legacy in the Blogosphere

Christopher at the Catalogue of Organisms has outdone himself and created a fantastic new blog carnival devoted to the study of biodiversity, with taxonomy and systematics at its core. He hopes to keep it alive and is looking for submissions and hsots. Yours truly will be hosting in February. This is great idea that fills a niche for the important yet often overlooked science of biodiversity. Here is an excerpt from Linnaeus' Legacy #1, and head over there today to get a fresh look at the blogosphere's best writing in biodiversity, taxonomy and systematics.

Next year also happens to be the 250th anniversary of the official beginning of zoological nomenclature, with the publication of the 10th edition of Linnaeus' Systema Naturae (the botanists were a bit quicker off the mark, and they trace things back to Linnaeus' Species Plantarum of 1753). It therefore brings me great pleasure to unveil the first installment of Linnaeus' Legacy. Hopefully this will be a monthly review of recent posts on the subject of biodiversity past and present, the study of said biodiversity and the questions of how to understand, describe and communicate about it. Posts will be accepted on all aspects of taxonomy and systematics, from the esoteric (species concepts, classificatory principles) to the pragmatic (new discoveries in the world of systematics) to the didactic (communicating about taxonomy). Since he established the practice of binomial nomenclature (originally intended to be simply a short stand-in for much longer, more official-sounding names), this is indeed Carl Linnaeus' legacy, though I'm not certain he'd appreciate everything we're doing with it.