Taxonomy is dying, writes Carol Kaesuk Yoon in the New York Times. Despite the modernization of the field — taxonomists now use sequencers, supercomputers, and modern evolutionary theory for their task — taxonomy is dying. Yoon says this is a shame. "The past few decades have seen a stream of studies that show that sorting and naming the natural world is a universal, deep-seated and fundamental human activity, one we cannot afford to lose because it is essential to understanding the living world, and our place in it," she writes.
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