Advances in Plant Taxonomy and Systematics

Systematics and taxonomy are basic sciences and are crucial for all applications dealing with living organisms [...].

Systematics and taxonomy are basic sciences and are crucial for all applications dealing with living organisms [1]. Taxonomic classification schemes, sought by early scholars to reflect "natural systems" [2], are nowadays universally accepted to reflect actual systematic relationships among organisms.
Phylogenetic reconstructions based on molecular systematics have provided a stable classification system at class, order, and family levels for many plant groups (see, e.g., [3][4][5]). However, at the genus level, due to a lack of knowledge, many classifications are still unstable and a lot of taxonomic changes have been published [6], with species that are often recombined under different genera or synonymized with others. Taxonomy users, either in the scientific community or in wider society, perceive this as a relevant (and often not fully understood) problem [7,8]. However, these changes are the obvious consequence of an increase in systematic knowledge. In this respect, proposals and ideas to abandon Linnean taxonomy [9,10] have not been accepted so far. Fortunately, nomenclatural and taxonomic databases are becoming increasingly widespread and authoritative (see, e.g., [11]), meaning that this problem could be easily superseded.
At a microevolutionary level, an integrated taxonomic approach [12] using a number of independent lines of evidence [13] is needed to disentangle the complex systematic relationships among units of diversity [14].
Accordingly, on one side, there is the need to build sound taxonomic hypotheses using multiple lines of evidence (see, e.g., [15][16][17][18]); on the other hand, given the ongoing mass extinctions and the decline of taxonomists in academies [19,20], there is the need to speed up the recognition and description of biodiversity on earth. In this respect, citizen science could also be helpful [21], for instance in observing and capturing plant diversity with a coverage and frequency much higher than by just relying on academic scholars.

Conflicts of Interest:
The author declares no conflict of interest.