FEATURE: What’s in a name?
"...it is the taxonomists who write up how and why the specimen is new and give it a name." Image: t.light/iStockphoto Species are all around us, and taxonomists are the people who allocate names to them. Such names are incredibly important, as they allow people from all over the world to talk about the same species, regardless of language differences. Taxonomy is a strange science because old and new are mixed together: the principles for naming new, never before seen species have their roots in the 18th century. Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus revolutionized taxonomy by developing the system of binomial nomenclature in the late 1700s. Previously, species were given very long names that were often not very helpful. Linnaeus streamlined the naming process. This helped avoid confusion because even if common names are shared amongst species, each one has a unique scientific name. We still use the Kingdom-Phylum-Class-Order-Family-Genus-Species hierarchy today.Discovering new species...