collecting

[Doug Yanega]

Robin wrote:

>        At the heart of this issue is the frustrating realization that there is
>very little funding for survey work although there is millions of dollars
>for restoration of lakes and rivers. How does one make an informed decision
>about restoration if there is no information on the species present?

THAT is the proverbial 64,000 dollar question. Also a variant on "The
Taxonomist's Lament", all too familiar to Taxacom subscribers.

In fact, were you to look back through the archives, you could find enough
postings by folks like Stuart Poss, myself, and others on this very topic
("Why is taxonomy taken for granted when it is ultimately so important? How
is science to proceed when all the taxonomists are gone?") to fill a
several megabyte file.

Of course, the more immediate answer to your question is probably along the
lines of this [cynical voice on]: if it takes time and money to make an
informed decision, but the people overseeing things either don't care or
don't know any better - then *un*informed decisions will be made, and it
will be a rare thing for anyone to be held accountable for it - unless
something goes catastrophically wrong as a result. Unless someone is in a
position to make a "sales pitch" for good taxonomy, and unless that pitch
is made succesfully to the people controlling the purse strings, good
taxonomy is probably one of the last things any project that is not
explicitly based *upon* taxonomy will concern itself with. One reason is
the vicious circle wherein someone in need of a complete floral/faunal list
discovers that they can't find or fund enough taxonomists to *get* a
complete list, at least not in a two or three-year time frame, so they
either abandon the idea altogether, or find one person who can do a single
focal taxon, often doing IDs for free. Thus, more and more papers and grant
proposals are submitted where taxa are IDed only to morphospecies (if
that), and it becomes easier to get such studies published and funded,
meaning less demand for taxonomists, meaning fewer taxonomists, meaning it
gets harder to find some when they're needed, and so on ad nauseum. If the
other alternative is simply to use non-professionals to make IDs to
species, using extant keys, then this only accelerates the process, because
it creates the illusion that we can get along just fine without
professional taxonomists. [cynical voice off]

Anyone here have any data as to what the ratio is these days of general
faunistic/floristic studies (having more than a single focal taxon) that
actually have taxonomists do the taxonomy to those that essentially wimp
out or fake it?

Peace,


Doug Yanega       Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California - Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521
phone: (909) 787-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
                http://insects.ucr.edu/staff/yanega.html
  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82