As the worlds first “official” cybertaxonomist a lot of people naturally respond, “cyber what?” when they first hear the term. The real credit for the word goes to Quentin Wheeler, former Keeper of Entomology at the NHM, and now vice president and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University. But what does cybertaxonomy actually mean? Not surprisingly different people have different definitions. A wiki on the website relating to the European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy (EDIT), presents three possible definitions:

• "A taxonomic work process that involves the use of standardised electronic tools to access information (databases, e-publications) and/or to generate knowledge bases and identification keys." Malte C. Ebach, 2006

• "The process by which information available in, or converted into from non-digital sources, standardized electronic format is collated analysed and synthesised into a digital representation of one or more taxon concepts. The end product of which is a combination of outputs in both digital and non-digital formats." Martin Pullan?, 2006

• "The practice of taxonomy, usually in an online environment, using (and innovating in the use of) software tools." Mark Jackson, 2006

I am not sure I find any of these definitions satisfactory. Perhaps Quentin's vision for his "International Institute for Species Exploration" which he defines and a place that will "fuse taxonomy with computer science and engineering", cuts closer to his original intended definition of cybertaxonomy. For me, the emerging field of "biodiversity informatics" is perhaps the closest match to some of what my colleagues and I actually do, but for most people "biodiversity informatics" is no more self-explanatory that cybertaxonomy.

To my way of thinking, taxonomy is simply the science of classification, and cyber relates to the use of computers and networks. Therefore how about

“the use of computers and the World Wide Web in a program of taxonomic research”.

This way just about all biological taxonomists are cybertaxonomist now!