Floras and Faunas, and descriptive taxonomy serving biodiversity: current uses and future perspectives for conservation biology

Informative conservation science is reliant on accurate, high quality and robust data. Floras and Faunas can often provide the baseline information which feeds into a wide variety of conservation decisions made at a national, regional and global level, particularly for species based conservation. Conservation priority-setting algorithms make increasing use of species distribution ranges and the ecological and life history information provided by such works. Taxonomy underpins conservation, and both conservation and taxonomy face severe funding limitations. Incomplete taxonomic coverage continues to hamper conservation, however, even within known organisms taxonomic fluctuation and taxonomic inflation have the propensity to adversely impact conservation priority-setting tools by altering the basic unit, the species. Conservation planning depends on species lists reflecting richness, diversity, endemism, threat and many other attributes that can be compared across locations and taxa. To aid conservation planning, conservation biology requires a taxonomic solution that both standardises the species units included on species lists, and that recognises that the units chosen for conservation reflect dynamic natural systems, and may differ from the units in the species listing process. In a time when human impact on natural systems continues to accelerate, we must seek novel solutions to reverse negative trends in biodiversity. Resolving these issues can only be achieved using comprehensive data and with intricate knowledge on the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. Electronic data availability is revolutionising our ability to provide accurate information on the status and trends of biodiversity, and make robust conservation management decisions. New types of collaboration are required between conservation biology and systematics to enhance the availability and utility of such data, to enable robust and accurate measures of biodiversity. This