Taxonomy by committee?

[Richard Hill]

I think this is needed.

There is a need to balance the need for useable current standards and
recognition that we don't have the information we need to have final
answers.  This is not a taxonomic issue.  It is a biodiversity management
need, an environmental assessment need and a legal need.

Lawyers and politicians will create these standards if we don't, and they
will give them legal permanence to the detriment of the flora or fauna.
Your proposal will have benefits only if it results in a long standing
committee of 'benevolent dictators' who exhibit Solomonly wisdom to produce
a broadly acceptable current snap-shot of knowledge, with a clear and fair
statement of minority views and recognized issues.


----- Original Message -----
From: Barry Roth <barry_roth at YAHOO.COM>
To: <TAXACOM at USOBI.ORG>
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2001 10:45 PM
Subject: Taxonomy by committee?


> An acquaintance of mine is the officer in charge of invertebrate topics in
the regional office of one of the US government agencies that manages a
great deal of land.  Among her responsibilities is knowledge of the
taxonomy, ranges, and threat/conservation status of quite a list of species,
and, not surprisingly, she faces some ambiguities.  A number of the listed
taxa (1) are not unequivocally recognizable by survey personnel, either
because they were poorly diagnosed originally or they are subject to
conflicting interpretations; (2) are, at least partly because of the
agency's own recent survey efforts, not as clear-cut as they seemed to the
early taxonomists (who had less material to work with); (3) are sized up
differently by DNA sequence analysis than by traditional methods.  To
address these issues, which she perceives (no doubt correctly) as problems
for agency decision-making, she is proposing a meeting of interested
parties, as follows:
> So far, I have imagined having all of the collected specimens of the
species in question ... together in one place, along with range maps ...,
recent DNA  data and geology/morphology/habitat information.  Then we can
look at the entire body of information about these species and try to draw
some conclusions about 1) which species are related to which, 2) how can we
identify them and what to call them, 3) where they can be expected
geographically and possibly 4) what to do about specimens with intermediate
characteristicsand ultimately  5) how to treat the various levels of
reliability in the database information.
> My first response, I'm afraid, was one of horror:  taxonomy is not done by
committee; biological reality is not decided by voice vote; how to discover
"which species are related to which" is a deep question on which fine minds
(such as Taxacomers) debate at length.  Some of the characters that I pay
attention to in the group in question are revealed by dissection, have
probably never been seen by some of the proposed participants, who likely
wouldn't know what to do with them if they did see them.
>
> And yet I recognize that agency biologists, responsible for input on
decisions that affect the fate of millions of acres of forest, may need
"clean" decisions; they may need committee opinions they can point to when
questioned hard about this species or that.
>
> What do people on this List think about this situation?  Are there
suggestions for procedures that would lead to helpful decisions -- hopefully
not straying too far from biological reality?  Is there a way to harmonize
an academic's tolerance -- love, even -- for manifold ambiguity and an
agency's need to have its eggs hard-boiled?
>
> The real situation is even more complex than this, but I am hoping that
this sketchy description contains enough generalities to call forth some
opinions.  Thanks,
>
> Barry Roth
>
>
>
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