Welcome to Ciliophora

This web site is intended to allow community editing of ciliate taxonomy. IT IS NOT INTENDED TO BE A RELIABLE REFERENCE TAXONOMY.

The initial taxonomy here was published by Denis Lynn (2008) to genus,  and then populated to species automatically from the Global Names project.  Consequently, there are many synonyms, mis-spellings and other extraneous errors that have arisen.  The intention is that ciliate taxonomists will adopt a section of interest (a genus or family, say) and curate the names that are shown there.  This taxonomy, as presented, does not include any taxonomic judgement, other than Denis'  down to genus level.

Curated taxa will be marked as 'valid' when a human taxonomist has assessed the nomenclature.  Similarly, the citation data listed may not be linked to the bibliography as yet.

If you would like to be involved in this effort that should result is a comprehensive monograph on ciliate systematics, please contact the site maintainers to be registered as an Editor and given the authority to modify the taxonomy on this site.  A second tier of editors will be created for students and others with a developing interest in ciliate systematics.  These people will be supervised by an Editor and their changed confirmed before being committed to the available taxonomy.

If you contribute to the taxonomy on this site, your name will be associated with the taxa you curate.  It is important to know that the taxonomic opinion shown to the world belongs to the taxonomist who took the decisions displayed on the screen.  As with paper publication, the system relies on personal reputation.