Linnaeus's Legacy Carries On

摘要

Uppsala, sweden—Nestled in the heart of this historic university city is a quiet garden with tidy rows of raised beds. It has been restored to the way it looked 260 years ago, when Carl Linnaeus occupied the adjacent house and paced the garden paths, formulating his influential Systema Naturae—a scheme for grouping and naming organisms according to their shared characteristics. Linnaeus is a source of national pride for Swedes, many of whom share his appreciation of nature, says ULf GaErdenfors, deputy director of the Swedish Species Information Center (SSIC), which compiles "red lists" of threatened flora and fauna that are used to guide national and international conservation policy. An entomologist, Gardenfors is spearheading an effort that would continue the legacy of Linnaeus by making Sweden the first country to create a complete inventory of all of the multicellular species living within its borders. Known as Svenska Artprojektet, or the Swedish Taxonomy Initiative (STI), the project has just entered its fourth year and, Gardenfors says, is on track to meet its goal of completing the inventory by 2021.