General commentary

There is an interesting new paper by Garnett et al. (https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000736) which addresses some of the social and institutional issues that have to be tackled to make it possible to construct online a consensus taxonomy of the world's species - a vision which was part the original CATE project as regards the aroids. To achieve this, an egalitarian ethic is needed to achieve the best quality by combining the talents of present and future experts around the world. This is a major challenge under the present norms of scientific evaluation, funding and crediting. Among the many current online taxonomic initiatives, Brazil's Flora 2020 stands out as an inspiring model of the mobilization of hundreds of taxonomists to provide not merely a list of accepted names but also taxonomic definitions (http://reflora.jbrj.gov.br/reflora/listaBrasil/ConsultaPublicaUC/ConsultaPublicaUC.do#CondicaoTaxonCP).