Welcome to the New Journal Taxonomy

Taxonomy is as old as the human language; it arose from the need to differentiate and name edible as well as poisonous plants and to be able to pass on this knowledge to the next generation. Starting with legendary figures such as Shennong, Emperor of China and Father of Chinese medicine [1], the Greek philosopher Aristotle, and the Roman naturalist Plinius, there has been a human need to name and classify all the living things. How amazed would these early naturalists be should they learn that in the XXI century, this would still be an ongoing challenge.

It was during the XVIII century, with the help of Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), that modern taxonomy was founded and it started being regarded as a proper science. Through his prolific publications, Linnaeus set the bases for the current binomial nomenclature, as well as a revolutionary system for classifying plants based on the sexual parts of the flower. The advent of molecular biology in the 1970s marked yet another revolution in this field, since it opened the door to using molecular traits (mainly DNA sequences) instead of the classic morphologic ones.

Nowadays, the ultimate goal of taxonomy, to describe every species of organism on Earth, is still quite unrealistic. For starters, we are not even sure about how many species there are (probably somewhere between 4 and 10 million) [2]. Moreover, even if we knew the exact number, it could take more than 1000 years to catalogue them all at our current rate, and by that time, a high percentage of these species might be extinct before we knew they even existed [3]. In order to prevent this loss, it is important to continue our efforts in closing this knowledge gap by renewing our interest in taxonomy and also implementing new technologies and methods to this end.

It is with this idea in mind that the journal Taxonomy (ISSN 2673-6500) is created. This journal aims to be a central forum for researchers in this area, as well as to highlight the importance of taxonomy and its current multidisciplinary approach. Let us wish Taxonomy a bright future.