Review of the monograph Zmitrovich I. V., Perelygin V. V., Zharikov M. V. Nomenclature and rank correlation of higher taxa of eukaryotes. Мoscow: INFRA-M, 2022. 183 p. ISBN 978-5-16-018531-6. (Book series “Folia Cryptogamica Petropolitana”. № 8)

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At the end of 2022, the book “Nomenclature and Rank Correlation of Higher Taxa of Eukaryotes” by I. V. Zmitrovich, V. V. Perelygin, and M. V. Zharikov was published. This book is unique in that it covers both theoretical biologists working in the field of systematics and practitioners engaged in industrial microbiology, bioengineering, and biomedicine. These areas are integrated here through biological systematics, which, as academician A. L. Takhtadjan noted, is both the foundation and crown of biology. Practitioners expect that the system of organisms will have the maximum prognostic ability to search for organisms with useful properties in those groups where organisms with known secretory/bioaccumulative activity have already been identified, without wasting time on non-systematic screening of all biological diversity. This is especially important for microorganisms, whose position in the system is less obvious than that of multicellular organisms, whose attribution to large groups causes fewer problems.

An increasing of amount of scientific information that quickly becomes outdated and sinks into the news stream presents a serious challenge for modern researchers. Changes in taxonomy occur so quickly that Internet classifiers do not keep up with them, which leads to the appearance of competing versions of classification and makes it difficult to find the optimal solution. The authors of the monograph seek to streamline new research in the taxonomy of eukaryotes, to determine consensus among specialists and to identify points where consensus has not been reached. To do this, they carried out a detailed review of the topology of the huge eukaryotic tree in order to determine the taxonomic rank of the groups and develop the rank structure of the eukaryotic system based on modern phylogenetic classification.

The book is opened with a portrait of Prof. Ksenia Mironovna Sukhanova, a remarkable scientist, teacher, one of the authors of the handbook “The Fauna of Aeration Tanks”, which has no analogues in the world, which was published in 1984. The text of monograph begins with an overview of the history of the study of protists, algae and fungi, and then in the first chapter presents nomenclature approaches to various levels of living organisms, which are not always formalized, and also describe the methods of constructing a synopsis in order to most clearly display the relationship between taxonomic categories. The second chapter provides a detailed synopsis of the eukaryotic system, which allows the reader to get a clear idea of the relationship of taxa and their rank correlation. Valuable information is references to the primary descriptions of a particular group (a total of 238 references). In the third chapter, the authors outline trends in the interaction of the leading edge of the taxonomy of large groups of eukaryotes and more conservative scientific and everyday ideas. The fourth chapter is addressed to biodiversity researchers – florists and faunists – and tells about terminological collisions associated with the instability of eukaryotic systematics.

The reviewer hopes that the next step of the authors will be their step towards the Russian-speaking reader, both towards popularizing the collected unique material and bringing it closer to practice, i.e. the revealing the richest biotechnological potential of various “large groups” of eukaryotes.

About the authors

Vladimir G. Luzhanin

Author for correspondence.
Email: vladimir.luzhanin@pharminnotech.com

Сand. Biol. Sciences, Associate Professor, Head of the Department of Botany and Pharmaceutical Biology, Rector

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