Department of Entomology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA.
Trends Ecol Evol. 2012 Feb;27(2):78-84. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2011.11.007. Epub 2011 Dec 19.
Taxonomists are arguably the most active annotators of the natural world, collecting and publishing millions of phenotype data annually through descriptions of new taxa. By formalizing these data, preferably as they are collected, taxonomists stand to contribute a data set with research potential that rivals or even surpasses genomics. Over a decade of electronic innovation and debate has initiated a revolution in the way that the biodiversity is described. Here, we opine that a new generation of semantically based digital scaffolding, presently in various stages of completeness, and a commitment by taxonomists and their colleagues to undertake this transformation, are required to complete the taxonomic revolution and critically broaden the relevance of its products.
分类学家可以说是自然界中最活跃的注释者，他们每年通过描述新分类单元收集和发布数以百万计的表型数据。通过对这些数据（最好在收集时）进行形式化，分类学家有望提供一个具有研究潜力的数据集，可以与基因组学相媲美，甚至超越它。十多年的电子创新和辩论已经引发了生物多样性描述方式的革命。在这里，我们认为，需要新一代基于语义的数字架构（目前处于不同的完整阶段），以及分类学家及其同事承诺进行这种转变，以完成分类学革命，并批判性地扩大其产品的相关性。
