Systematics Agenda 2000: an historical perspective

The publication of Systematics Agenda 2000 in February, 1994 represented an historic event in the collaboration of the systematic biology community designed to set a research agenda for a twenty five year period across the areas of basic and applied systematics. How the community came to take the initiative to produce such a consensus is outlined. Of special interest is the emergence of the Systematics Agenda 2000 initiative from a North American perspective to a truly global enterprise.