An official US Federal Taxonomy?

[Peter Rauch]

On Fri, 28 Aug 1998, James H. Beach wrote:
> ...  Most of the time, most of
> us are pretty content to runaround with a kind of general, consensus
> classification in our heads or in our project or cataloging databases for
> the groups we need to deal with.

But, the crux of the matter is that at _critical_ times, we should _not_
be content with a kind of general, consensus classification. In critical
times, we want to have at hand and to use the most robust
interpretation(s) possible to understand what we are dealing with. And,
we "deal with" organisms, as you point out, in a myriad of ways,
including for systematic, legal, environmental, social and other ways.
When, for example, management of environments is the objective, it is
only right that we have access to the most sound of information, and not
through "just" one consensus classification (which may obscure the
existence of a more refined or alternative view of an organism/taxon).
That may make life harder, but who says that environmental management
should be easy?

> What the US federal agencies are trying to do with ITIS is to eliminate the
> problems caused by having multiple classifications for the same organisms
> across US federal agencies.  In the recent past, NOAA, NASA, USDA, EPA,
> USGS, etc. managed taxonomic names and classifications independently and
> when compared across agencies, inconsistently.  So ITIS is attempting to
> bring some taxonomic and nomenclatural order to the federal house for legal
> and policy use for US organisms.  Yes, the names and the concepts behind
> them will likely change through time (assuredly they all will).

In seeking to achieve this "order" to naming the "same organisms", is
ITIS carrying with each "standardized" name, all the
systematic/classificatory/nomenclatural baggage that applies to that
"same organism"? Even more importantly, when someone decides that this
"same organism" is not the same, will the ITIS scheme of standardization
accomodate the difference (and even more importantly, will it allow the
several names applied over time to that "same organism", say a specimen
sample, to be recorded and tracked properly so that the interpretations
given to studies that were based on that specimen can be re-evaluated in
timely and informed ways?

> ....  Don't
> shoot ITIS for trying to improve the quality of taxon data for federal
> agency use.

The question that is being raised, I think, is not one of shooting ITIS,
but simply of asking what are some of the consequences of the particular
way that ITIS chose to improve the quality of taxon data.

> If as researchers, we need an informatics architecture that handles
> multiple classifications, that represents and visualizes them accurately as
> an index to bib or specimen data, or to web based information, or for
> nomenclatural uses, or for whatever, then we need to model, design,
> implement, manage, fund, and sustain such an architecture as a community.

Exactly the issue... The need you describe is not just one for
researchers, but for all users of organism names. If we are told today
that we are looking at an elephant, but later we find out we were
looking at a mammoth, what does that mean to our particular application
(legal, management, recreational, classification, etc)?

> ...  ITIS is a necessary and
> worthwhile piece of a global taxonomic information infrastructure, and we
> would be smart as researchers and as a community to support and collaborate
> with people from other communities (e.g. federal governments) who are
> trying to fund, build and sustain taxonomic informatics infrastructure,
> even if it is only part of the global solution.

OK. But, maybe some of us need to understand better (learn more about)
how this particular standardization will work in the real world of
changing classifications and taxonomies vis a vis particular
applications of names in the multitude of human endeavors. The argument,
as you present it, that a whole bunch of people (ITIS govt agencies)
have agreed to use a specific set of names/classification(s) and that
this agreement, per se, is good, doesn't quite complete the story. I'd
like a pointer to more of the rationale and infrastructure being built
by ITIS, esp as it relates to the more diverse world of multiple
classifications that you acknowledge do exist for real reasons.
Peter