An official US Federal Taxonomy?

[Karstad-Schueler]

Stuart Fullerton wrote:
>
> ...we can send ambassadors to argue with folks in other countries
> as to why they should adopt our standards, and develop a united nations
> committie of biological and scientific standards and boycott all the
> nations and countries that do not bend to our standards. what _are_ we
> giving to our children? get your insect pins out and prepare to defend
> your territory.  big brother is lurking inside your microscope.

* An 'offical' taxonomy like this would be much less offensive if it were
to provide diverse published taxonomic *options* for the species (and
higher?)-level classification of organisms. As far as one can judge from
the website, the proposed database is to be a sort of super AOU
Checklist, embodying a single taxonomic arrangement, which will
inevitablely be the opinions of the consulted authorities at the moment
the list was last revised. On the prototype list,

http://www.itis.usda.gov/itis/itis_query.cgi

if I want to split Pyganodon off from Anodonta, or recognize Rana
palustris mansuetti, I'm relegated to INVALID NAME land. A very few
synonyms are listed, but these aren't 'live' Linnaean synonyms jostling
for senior status in the case the taxa are differently arranged, they're
just dead names, presumeablely shown as relicts of previous useage by the
ill-informed.

The use of a name has always meant (despite widespread misunderstanding
of lists drawn up by semi-officious bodies) that the user considers the
name used to be the the senior and otherwise appropriate name for the
taxon referred to. Many People are all too willing to accept lists and
classifications as surrogates for responsibility and understanding. Lists
are a convienence, but they don't absolve authors from personal
responsibility for endorsing the taxonomic arrangements they use.

If it incorporates a single taxonomy, a giant government taxonomic
database will become a freedom-destroying strait jacket which will teach
nonsystematic biologists and the public the wrong lessons about
systematics and nomenclature. If, on the other hand, such a database
incorporates (within reasonable limits of time and consensus) a range of
opinions, referenced to the supporting publications, it could provide an
important reference and also provide handles for different arrangements
which result in using the same name for a local population or higher
taxon.

In a sense, a one-dimensional list of names is like going back to the
early days of computerization, when we were going to have to abandon
names, and refer to taxa by numbers that would fit on an 80-column punch
card, because languages and functions for manupulating alphanumeric
strings hadn't been invented yet. If this official US Federal Taxonomy is
just to be a one-dimensional list, it will incorporate neither the
complexity that modern computer programming is capable of dealing with
nor traditional systematic practice: if nomenclature is governed by
rules, it's possible to teach a computer to follow them, and the most
fundamental rule of nomenclature is freedom to chose the taxonomy you
believe to be correct.

A database with options would also better serve the goal of indicating
which organisms names used in US Federal databases refer to: Dendroica
coronata of the 1957 AOU Checklist is quite a different taxon from D.
coronata (including D. auduboni) of the 1983 AOU Checklist, and it's not
always possible (and always labour-intensive) to retrospectively
'correct' old unvouchered lists to a new list of names.

So whether these thoughts have been useful to anybody else, they've
suggested to me ways in which our taxonomic dictionary at the EOBM can
deal with some of these problems.

fred schueler.
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