Linnean naming system faces challengers
Bob Holmes

19:00 08 September 04

A band of renegade biologists is taking on a mammoth task that threatens to
upset a status quo that has been unchallenged for almost 250 years. Put
simply, they want to change the way scientists name every living organism on
the planet.

These rebels say that our system of naming plants, animals, fungi and
bacteria, famously introduced by Linnaeus in 1758, is frustrating efforts to
understand the living world. They want to replace it with a more rational
scheme they call the PhyloCode.

Critics have slammed their proposal, arguing that it will be a waste of time
and effort that will hinder the urgent task of cataloguing the thousands or
even millions of as yet undiscovered species before they go extinct. It
could also compromise laws designed to protect biodiversity, placing
endangered species at unnecessary risk.

Linnaeus developed the now familiar binomial system of nomenclature, in
which the name of each species includes its genus. This identifies Homo
sapiens, for example, as a member of the genus Homo.
That system has since been expanded, so that every identified living species
is also placed in a hierarchy that stretches from phylum at the top, down
through class, order, family and genus.

Full Text at NewScientist
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996369

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek
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