vanishing taxonomists, which??

[christian thompson]

Chris, This really sounds interesting as it relates to other things. I look
forward to seeing the complete analysis.

My data on curators of Diptera (Insecta) indicates that we have lost half
the positions at major museum devoted to flies since the mid-1970s. Yet we
know that flies represent 10% of the known biodiversity of the World (about
150,000 described species and my estimate is that is 10% of the total
Diptera diverse (or 1,500,000 species)), but Society seems to be wanting to
invest in knowing more about the 1% which is known (vertebrates), than the
unknown. Which to my thinking is really foolish, as there is probably much
more of benefits to Society to be discovered among the unknown little
organisms, like fungi and insects, than is to be found among the well-known
birds and mammals.

And it seems the major preoccupation of vertebrate taxonomists is higher
classification / relationships. The "are birds dinosaurs?" questions or the
phylocode versus Linnaean nomenclature when the real threats to us come from
the combinations of insects and microbes (Iike West Nile fever and newly
introduced vectors like Aedes albopictus).

Oh, well ...

F. Christian Thompson
Systematic Entomology Lab., ARS, USDA
Smithsonian Institution
Washington, D. C. 20560-0169
(202) 382-1800 voice
(202) 786-9422 FAX
cthompso at sel.barc.usda.gov
visit our Diptera site at www.diptera.org

>>> Christoffer Schander <c.schander at ZOOL.GU.SE> 03/28 2:43 PM >>>
Are the taxonomists really vanishing? Yes and no. I have in the past
two months written to 170 Natural history/Zoology museums and to date
received replies from 94 of them. The results so far shows that the
number of invertebrate (including insect) taxonomists (curators) have
decreased with slightly more than 50 in the last 20 years, but the
number of vertebrate taxonomists have actually increased with about
150. So, SOME taxonomists are vanishing, while others are
proliferating.

I will get back to TAXACOM with a more full report in a couple of
weeks when I have heard back from more institutions.

Chris Schander
Arctic Station, University of Copenhagen