New Animal Rules

This article is about the new rules made by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN).  Earlier, ICZN had very strict rules about publishing names of new animals on paper.  However now those information can be electronically published.  They believe this process will speed up the process of adding animals to the database.  However, many other scientists don’t agree with this view.  It is difficult enough to keep track of all the new discoveries.  Often, many scientists in different parts of the world name the same animals with different names.  So ICZN needed the strict rules to link scientists all over the world.  According to the article, about 20,000 new animal species are added each year, and for each taxa 2-10 legal names can be found.  This makes the process of properly keeping records very difficult.  While many scientists believe digitalizing will make things more confusing, ICZN feels it will make the process faster and less complicated.  They still have rules for digitally publishing nomenclature.  The electronic journal which publishes the information must have an ISSN or ISBN number.