The truly new systematics-megascience in the information age

At the Fourth Biennial Conference of the Systematics Association, which took place at Trinity College, Dublin, 18-22 August 2003, the organizers scheduled an opening plenary symposium, Systematics of Large and Species Rich Taxa, directed towards exploring paths to the goal of bringing systematics into the 21st century. This will not be an easy task and will involve processing huge databases of information. The symposium, however, was a timely session that brought into focus three major areas of concern that I believe deserve wider circulation than just amongst the participants of the biennale. Many issues and problems were examined in some depth by an international array of speakers, to whom I will allude below as I relate my own personal perspective.