Taxonomy plays an important role in understanding the origin, evolution, and ecological functionality of biodiversity. There are large number of unknown species yet to be described by taxonomists, which together with their ecosystem services cannot be effectively protected prior to description. Despite this, taxonomy has been increasingly underrated insufficient funds and permanent positions to retain young talents. Further, the impact factor-driven evaluation systems in China exacerbate this downward trend, so alternative evaluation metrics are urgently necessary. When the current generation of outstanding taxonomists retires, there will be too few remaining taxonomists left to train the next generation. In light of these challenges, all co-authors worked together on this paper to analyze the current situation of taxonomy and put out a joint call for immediate actions to advance taxonomy in China.

This paper summarizes the advances and challenges in spider taxonomy of China. A table comparing the number of valid genera and species in China, Europe and the world is provided. To date, the Chinese spider fauna is represented by 5,084 species, under 809 genera in 69 spider families. An “All Species Inventory” of spiders in Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden provides an example of China’s spider species richness, with more than 782 species recorded within a small area. Intensified research in recent years has grown the national catalog of Chinese spiders from 1,050 species in 1983 to 5,084 species today. There are reasons to believe that spider species richness in China will far exceed this grand total. With enhanced support and investment in spider taxonomic research, many more new species will be discovered and described in China

Phylogenomic approaches are growingly applied in the systematic studies of animals with the rapid advancement of sequencing and analytical tools. Aiming to accelerate the systematic studies using genome-scale data in China, this paper outlines the commonly used techniques for generating phylogenomic datasets: RNA-seq based transcriptome, target-enrichment based UCEs and AHE, RAD-seq, whole genome sequencing, and briefly discusses the pros and cons of each technique. Major analytical procedures for the 1KITE transcriptome pipeline, the PHYLUCE (UCEs) and AHE pipelines and the PLWS (low-coverage whole genome sequencing) pipeline are summarized, and recent achievements valuable for phylogenomic analyses are introduced.

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The researches on taxonomy and phylogeny of the subphylum Crustacea in China, mainly the marine species, are reviewed in the present paper. The researches involved taxonomy, morphology, fauna and zoogeography, phylogeny and systematics. The mentioned groups almost cover all groups of the Crustacea which have been studied by Chinese scholars. This review is of great significance to summarize the achievements in the field of taxonomy and phylogeny on marine crustaceans in China.

Planarian is an excellent model for studying several scientific issues, and planarianology has become an active research field in the world. Researchers at home and abroad have conducted a lot of in-depth studies on planarians in various areas. This paper outlined the panorama of planarian research in China and summarized the advances from three aspects of taxonomy, molecular phylogeny and phylogeography, regeneration, tissue homeostasis and immunity as well as toxicology. Furthermore, the current problems and future development direction and tendency of planarian research in China are briefly analyzed and prospected. Importantly, the catalogue of planarians in China is also presented.