The major historical trends of biodiversity studies / Edward O. Wilson -- Linnaeus : a passion for order / David Quammen -- Daniel Rolander : the invisible naturalist / James Dobreff -- Taxonomy and the survival of threatened animal species : a matter of life and death / Gordon McGregor Reid -- Engineering a Linnaean ark of knowledge for a deluge of species / Quentin D. Wheeler -- Historical name-bearing types in marine molluscs : an impediment to biodiversity studies? / Philippe Bouchet and Ellen E. Strong -- Flying after Linnaeus : diptera names since Systema naturae (1758) / Neal L. Evenhuis. [et al.] -- E-publish or perish? / Sandra Knapp and Debbie Wright -- Reviving descriptive taxonomy after 250 years : promising signs from a mega-journal in taxonomy / Zhi-Qiang Zhang -- Provisional nomenclature : the on-ramp to taxonomic names / David E. Schindel and Scott E. Miller -- Future taxonomy / David J. Patterson -- The encyclopedia of life : a new digital resource for taxonomy / James Hanken -- Future taxonomy today : new tools applied to accelerate the taxonomic process / Norman F. Johnson -- The all genera index : strategies for managing the big index of all scientific names / David Remsen -- Linnaeus, Sherborn, ZooBank / Andrew Polaszek and Ellinor Michel -- ZooBank : reviewing the first year and preparing for the next 250 / Richard L. Pyle and Ellinor Michel -- Celebrating 250 dynamic years of nomenclatural debates / Benoit Dayrat -- 250 years of Swedish taxonomy / Fredrik Ronquist.