The name game

摘要

With access to the Internet, the (official) world of animals and plants will soon be at your fingertips. In a landmark ruling, zoologists last week agreed that newly identified species can be named in online-only publications. Previously, the first official description of anything that crawled, flew, wriggled, walked or swam across Earth needed to be formally written up and recorded in print, where it would remain in perpetuity for future scientists to reference.