World Forestry

Dear all,

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
. Any questions or reactions will be welcome at
lancelot@mnhn.fr .

Best wishes,

Daphne DUIN
EDIT – Stakeholder Liaison Officer

Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle
EDIT
CP 43 (Dir. des Collections)
57, rue Cuvier
75231 Paris cedex 05

Tel (33) (0)1 40 79 5739
Fax (33) (0)1 40 79 53 99
Email: duin@mnhn.fr
http://www.e-taxonomy.eu