See NATURE for new view of Taxonomy

[BjB]

christian thompson wrote:

> Charles Godfray has got this week's commentary section of Nature magazine to
> tell us how we must re-invent ourselves if we are to survive and flourish.
>
> Given that I have been frequently "flamed" for suggesting much of Godfray
> says, etc., I would be interested in hearing TAXACOM's reaction to this
> commentary.
>
> So, see "Challenges for taxonomy" in Nature, 417: 17-19 (2 May 2002).


Hav'nt we already "re-invented" ourselves.

I think it would be cooler to discuss how to capture raw data (matrixes)
and construct phylogenies and identification keys on the fly with web
applications.

Or how to create personal higher classification schemes/ views of
centralized databases of species information.

In truth there are hundreds of projects that are doing some sort of web
database of species. (I bet most of the people on this list are part of
one)

The idea of naming a new species in an online database is not new. But
we want everyone to know about it. Hiding it in a large database it will
get overlooked by everyone but the specialists.

In truth bioinformatics is the raw data that taxonomy is based on.It is
silly to lament the decline of taxonomy, and celebrate the growth of
bioinformatics in the same issue of Nature (see the ad/article "Biology
Databases: Information overload" on page 14.). The two go together hand
and hand.

In my opinion, the real attention should be directed toward the field of
paleoinformatics, and the 99.99% of species that are extinct.

--
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[:-> Benjamin John Burger                              <-:]
[:-> Division of Paleontology                          <-:]
[:-> American Museum of Natural History                <-:]
[:-> Central Park West at 79th Street NY, NY, USA      <-:]
[:-> bjburger at amnh.org                                 <-:]
[:-> http://paleo.amnh.org/bjburger                    <-:]
[:-> The AMNH fossil collection: http://paleo.amnh.org <-:]
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