Species
No concept has greater theoretical and practical importance in biology than species. Without reliable knowledge of species, we are incapable of accurately identifying the kinds of organisms we are studying, and without equally reliable scientific names, our efforts to communicate our observations are muted. Show an unfamiliar plant or animal to anyone, adult or child, and her first question is invariably, “What is it?” A crucial part of the answer to that question is a species name, and behind that name are sophisticated scientific hypotheses. In the age of digital databases, scientific names are playing an ever more central role in biodiversity informatics (Patterson et al. 2006).