The Rules of Naming.

Classification follows particular rules, which are more or less agreed upon worldwide. That is, the responsibility for making, maintaining, and changing the rules is a global enterprise amongst biologists, and disagreements about naming are addressed globally too.

Species are considered true biological entities: the naming of species is thus qualitatively different from the naming of higher taxa. These taxa, genera, families and so on upwards, are not biological entities, but logical groupings of biological entities. Even the genus, although its name is part of the species name, is a logical construct.


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