When I started to classify my wildlife photographs, I thought that the best way to do this would be to follow my scientific training and to identify animals according to the latin binominial. Regretfully, I now realize that the scientific literature is in constant flux (to be praised, of course). Luckily, the species names are more or less fixed (except when several authors have carried out a new identification and we must return to the first original mention in the literature). The generic names, in particular seem to change rapidly, partly due nowadays to the possibility of using DNA studies to regroup species. Even family affiliations move often. For example, I had originally classified all my Guineafowl pictures in the folder PHASIANIDAE. They now belong to their own family NUMIDIDAE. And the Stone Partridge (Ptilopachus petrosus) which was also a member of the PHASIANIDAE, has now moved (quite against its will, I’m sure…) into the family Odontophoridae, a New World family of Galliforms (!).

So, now, before loading photographs into my web collection, I must carefully check the status of species’ identification. I believe it might have been simpler for me to ID photos according to their common (French or English) names which don’t seem to change so much…