taxonomy & taxonomists

[mcall]

Peter Schuchert wrote:

> IWhy otherwise the Zoological Record gets thicker and thicker each year?
>

Whereas the focus and scientific publication was dominantly systematic in the past,
now you will find a lot of material in its pages on ecology, physiology, behavior,
genetics, etc. So the size of ZR over the years is not a precise index of
systematic activity.

One small note.  In 1901 Whiteaves published a list of the invertebrates known for
the Atlantic coast of Canada.  A partial updating of that list only occurred
recently with Bergeron's list of the invertebrates of the Gulf of St. Lawrence (one
third of the Atlantic coast).   The most activity in the gorgonians on the Atlantic
coast in recent years has been that of an environmental organization surveying the
occurrence of "deepsea corals" off Nova Scotia.  The amount of information, though
not always reliably identified to species, tripled the amount of knowledge derived
from scant museum collections.

don
Don McAllister