Describing species: Practical taxonomic procedures for biologists

This book is intended to introduce students and professional scientists to basic taxonomic procedure and enable them to carry out whatever taxonomic writing they need in their studies or careers. It is intended not as a systematics textbook, but as a supplement to a systematics course and a desk reference and guide to nomenclatural procedure and taxonomic writing. Because it covers both the botanical and zoological codes of nomenclature, it should be useful to workers in most fields of biology and paleontology. It will be most valuable to ecologists, field biologists, and others who encounter new taxa in the course of their research, but it will be useful to anyone who has to write any document in which taxonomic descriptions figure: reports, checklists, floras, faunal surveys, revisions, monographs, or guides. Systematics is a global and multicultural enterprise, as the examples in this book show. Although the book was written for an English-speaking audience, it should be useful anywhere Taxonomy is spoken.