taxonomy

Some say Latin names are elitist and incomprehensible, but they started out as a way to be inclusive.

During a survey of wood-decaying fungi in the subalpine forests of Southwest China, distinctive corticioid specimens were collected from fallen Abies trunks. Based on a combination of morphological characteristics and multigene phylogenetic analyses of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) and nuclear large subunit (nLSU) sequences, these specimens were found to represent a highly distinct and st…

Scientific Reports, Published online: 13 August 2026; doi:10.1038/s41598-026-66176-y Integrative taxonomy reveals multiple Mediterranean invasions by Indo-Pacific Dorvillea (Annelida, Dorvilleidae)

Myxomycetes (true slime molds) are amoebozoan protists involved in decomposition and nutrient cycling in terrestrial ecosystems. Recent molecular studies have led to major taxonomic revisions in Physaraceae, including the establishment of the genus Nannengaella for highly calcified species previously placed in Physarum. To refine the taxonomy and distribution of Nannengaella in China, we used an …

Somewhere in the naming of animals, science and theology have always made uneasy company. The Old Testament hands Adam his first job: go through every creature and give it a name. Taxonomy, in other words, is possibly the oldest human profession. Peter Huemer, a moth researcher at the Tyrolean State Museum in Innsbruck, seems to reckon it’s also one of the most urgent. His newest contribution to …

Followers of Ze Frank submitted over 8,000 names for a newly discovered chiton The post Scientists Turn to the Internet to Name New Species appeared first on Nautilus .

Researchers discovered that a poison frog species described decades ago was based on a mix-up involving the wrong museum specimen. The frog tied to the official species name turned out to be brown, not the colorful animal shown in the original photo. After tracing old records and images, scientists corrected the error and reclassified the frog as part of an already-known species. The case undersc…

Scientists are discovering species quicker than ever before, with more than 16,000 new species discovered each year.

Ovophis jenkinsi is dark brownish-grey, with trapezoidal patches on its back. It is endemic to China's Yingjiang County and is not difficult to find in the wild. The post Lazy predator: A new species of mountain pit viper from China first appeared on Blog .

Get to know the most exciting new species published in Pensoft journals last year. The post Celebrating taxonomic discoveries: Top 10 new species of 2023 first appeared on Blog .

By the middle of the 20th century the museum-based classical zoologists were being looked down on. Their traditional pursuit of describing, naming and cataloguing species that were believed to be newly discovered, or of revising classifications and taxonomy of whole groups of animals, was—and indeed in Britain still is—most definitely out of fashion. The classical museum zoologists, with some not…

Systematics of Tardigrada: A reanalysis of tardigrade taxonomy with specific reference to Guil et al. (2019) by: James F. Fleming and Kazuharu Arakawa Summarized by Joshua Golub, a senior at the University of South Florida in the department of geosciences.… Continue reading →