Taxacom: Brief survey on species classification

[Stijn Conix]

Dear researcher,



The identification, description and classification of biological species is among the core tasks of biological taxonomy. While species classification has been subject to extensive debate ever since the advent of modern taxonomy, very few studies have systematically and quantitatively investigated this debate. We hope to start filling this gap with this study.



We kindly invite you to participate in a survey about classification in taxonomy. You will get to read three fictional taxonomic abstracts, and for each of these abstracts you will get two or three questions. It should take you no more than 10 minutes to answer the questions.



While we do not collect personal information such as IP addresses or names, we do ask about your taxon of specialization and country of residence. For that reason, we will anonymize the data by transforming the geographical information (from country-level to larger clusters) before downloading it for analysis or making the data publicly available.



Click here<https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fkuleuven.eu.qualtrics.com%2Fjfe%2Fform%2FSV_e8S98nC4l2rFI0e&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Cc1e37020b6ec4634bbc408da97099cb3%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637988364797842300%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=BYsD1RJUvIgbbYegIvdZqs5K5rkRlGugcufrVwkKF%2BY%3D&reserved=0> to start the survey, or paste this link into your browser: https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fkuleuven.eu.qualtrics.com%2Fjfe%2Fform%2FSV_e8S98nC4l2rFI0e&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Cc1e37020b6ec4634bbc408da97099cb3%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637988364797842300%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=BYsD1RJUvIgbbYegIvdZqs5K5rkRlGugcufrVwkKF%2BY%3D&reserved=0



Should you have any questions or comments about the survey, please contact Stijn Conix (stijn.conix at kuleuven.be<mailto:stijn.conix at kuleuven.be>). If you think the subject of this study is important and you want to help us out, please consider forwarding the survey to other taxonomists.



With kind regards,


Prof. Frank Zachos
Prof. Andreas De Block
Dr. Stijn Conix
Vincent Cuypers