The Young Systematists, in German "Junge Systematiker" (JuSys; www.jusys.gfbs-home.de/), represent a non-profit organisation of early career scientists in the fields of taxonomy and systematics that spans across all groups of organisms. The JuSys were founded in 1998 as a working group of the newly founded German Society for Biological Systematics (GfBS) and have since evolved into an active, autonomous group that is also increasingly attempting to influence the political debate around the situation in taxonomic and systematic research (see the open letter of the JuSys on a debate in the German parliament about supporting taxonomic re-search by Kaiser et al. 2011). They currently have about 300 members of mainly, but not exclusively, German-speaking undergraduate and graduate students as well as postdocs. The JuSys are represented by a spokesperson who is elected by the members on a biannual term and represents the needs of the JuSys. The aim of the organisation is promoting and supporting early career scientists in taxonomy and systematics, primarily through a regular exchange of knowledge on methods and scientific questions through meetings and self-organised workshops. It also serves as an important network for the exchange of ideas and important infor-mation, such as scholarships, conferences, and job announcements, through a widely used email list server. The GfBS generously gives financial support for the organisation of the JuSys meetings and workshops as well as supporting individual JuSys members with travel grants for the annual GfBS conference. This current, special volume of ODE both highlights and promotes the high quality, diversity, and impact of the research being performed by early career taxono-mists and systematists as represented by the JuSys. The idea of a special volume of ODE including only contributions of early career scientists was discussed by some members of the JuSys and approved by the GfBS board in 2011 under the conditions that at least the first author is a member of the JuSys and that the papers otherwise meet all the normal requirements of the jour-nal (including peer review). We, the guest editors of this volume, are also members of the JuSys and assumed our roles voluntarily. Under the guidance of the former chief editor of ODE, Olaf Bininda-Emonds, we were ultimately responsible for all aspects of the special volume, including issuing the call for papers, organising the review process of all submitted papers, and casting the editorial judgements. We want to thank all JuSys authors for trustfully submitting their manuscripts for this special issue and Olaf Bininda-Emonds for his great support in realising this project. "The Young Systematists special issue" of ODE clearly demonstrates that the current generation of early career scientists in taxonomy and systematics has ...