ABSTRACT
All scientic disciplines feel a certain push and pull, balancing growth and stability, anticipating improvement from new discoveries, yet waiting for well-grounded practical results to warrant change. Species names are slightly different than other scientic products, in that species are used by everyone, and it is not always obvious how a change in name offers any improvement. The explicit goal of nomenclature is to provide clear, stable information about species identities (e.g., Godfray & Knapp, 2004). This seems somewhat at odds with the goals of systematics, as with any scientic discipline, to iteratively test hypotheses about species identity and interrelationships (Chapter 2).
