Taxonomy, BiologyBase & Me

Loosely defined, taxonomy includes the art and science of naming and keeping track of the names of organisms. There's much more to it than that, and those of us who are trained in systematics, taxonomy and nomenclature find they really touch on all aspects of biology. However, for purposes of this note, I'm just dealing with just this one aspect.

Taxonomy as it is practiced today reflects our understanding of the relationships of organisms. Organisms thought to be descended from a common ancestor are included within a single group (called a clade, and the study of clades is called cladistics). These clades vary in size and composition, and the word clade is a generic term for any of these groups.

An example of a clade would be a species. The mountain lion, Puma concolor, is a species, and all mountain lions are included in the "mountain lion clade." Other clades would include Felidae, the family of all cats and Carnivora, the order of all carnivores (though carnivore has a specific meaning here, and does not just mean 'meat eater'.

Within the mountain lion clade, there are other clades - for instance, the "Florida panther" clade, which is a group of animals all with a presumed common ancestor.

There are thousands of biologists working today, increasing our understanding of the living world around us. As our understanding of organisms changes, our understanding of their relationships change. Because the taxonomy should reflect our understanding of the relationships of organisms, when there is enough evidence to suggest that organisms that were thought to be closely related really aren't - or that unrelated species are now believed to be closely related, the taxonomy needs to change along with that understanding.

For most of the history of biology all a biologist could use to understand the relationships of organisms was visible physical differences. Right now, through the development and use of new techniques such as genetic analysis, new and more detailed behavioral studies, and even better ways of analyzing information about physical differences, our understanding of relationships among organisms is changing rapidly and profoundly.

To top it all off, there are lively debates on many of the changes made, and some of them are deeply divisive among the communities of specialists.

For many, both biologist and non-biologists alike, the changes brought about in taxonomy by these new understandings, and the debates coming out of them, can be intimidating and frustrating.

For those of us trying to reflect those changes over a broad range of organisms in publications such as this website, this all can be quite maddening.

While I do try to maintain this website to the best of my ability, and update whenever possible when there are major and generally accepted changes, I do find it impossible to keep up with everything. There are hundreds of new species named each year, in hundreds of different publications. There are revisions and reexaminations of groups of organisms published nearly every day. There is no way I could keep up with it all - I can't even always keep up with all the changes happening involving California birds, which is among my specialties.

So, this website is out of date. It is out of date by the time I get the information to include on it. Sometimes it is out of date in small ways, sometimes in large ways.

This is also a labor of love. I don't get paid to produce these pages. In fact, I get the privilege of supporting them at considerable expense to myself. In addition, I have a couple jobs, a family, and friends. This isn't the only thing I do with my free time.

All I can do is the best I can do. If you see changes that need to be made, please let me know, I love to hear them - even if they don't get reflected here quickly enough for some. But if you just want to tell me that "the website is a mess," please just let me know where your perfect website is so I can link to it. If you find a good website, even if you don't think mine is a mess, please don't hesitate to let me know anyway! I'm always looking for new quality links).

To put it succinctly - please bear with me.