[Taxacom] Extrapolation

[Bob Mesibov]

Excerpts from keynote address,  'Reflections on the first
quarter-century of the IUS', International Union of Systematists
distributed conference, 5 April 2035:

'I know some of you will smile when I say this, but the communication
and data storage capabilities we had when the ISU was founded weren't
bad, really. They were adequate for what we then understood to be the
tasks of systematics. When the archiving of past systematic efforts was
completed, some 15 years ago, the global data infrastructure was ready
to receive it in a dedicated layer, accessible to historians of science
and to those interested in the minutiae of character expression. I doubt
that many in this audience, today, spend much time in that layer, either
individually or in groups, but that isn't simply because the information
kept there is frozen. It's because as systematists we're more interested
in living, breathing generalities than in dead specifics. Once you
understand the principle, why clutter your mind with a thousand
instances? As an entomologist, I can at any time join a layer evidencing
in real time the evolutionary mechanisms by which antennal setae become
specialised, by which eggs are protected from fungi, or by which plant
hosts can be switched. Why would I go to a silent layer containing only
scattered evidence that these processes have evolved?'

'Some may argue, but to me the most significant shift in systematics
over the past 25 years has been the move away from mere description of
species after species, to a much more productive focus on exactly how
organisms are related. As the number of so-called taxonomists declined,
the number of developmental and phylogenetic generalists grew
spectacularly. In a very literal sense, age made room for youth in our
museums and universities. Where once there were tiny rooms, each
occupied by a white-haired specialist surrounded by paper books and
dusty specimens, there's now a large, bustling laboratory full of young
people. Where once there were dry arguments over whether one fly
specimen should be given the same name as another fly specimen, there
are now lusty debates on whether real or synthetic genomes are better
for modelling speciation events in particular fly lineages. I can think
of no single fact more emblematic of the change in systematics than
this: in the absence of fossils, we still know, plus or minus one
hundred thousand years, just when Micrognathozoa first appeared on
Earth, and how.'

'And, of course, systematics is much more manageable than it was 25
years ago, because there are fewer taxa to deal with. I can well
remember how depressed I was, back then, to think of all those millions
of species yet to be classified. Well, for better or worse, the picture
has changed dramatically. Sustainable living initiatives have allowed
mankind to extend small-scale agriculture, light industry and
people-friendly cities into formerly inhospitable environments
worldwide. Yes, today there are fewer species in total, but we
understand far better than we could ever have imagined the biology and
relationships of those resilient species that share our farms, our parks
and our gardens. And hasn't that been our goal all along, to better know
Life? What's more, salvage genomics has rescued for future study the
essence of many of those species we no longer have with us. Their place
in the Tree of Life is secure; we know where they fit in.'
-- 
Dr Robert Mesibov
Honorary Research Associate, Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery
and School of Zoology, University of Tasmania
Contact: PO Box 101, Penguin, Tasmania, Australia 7316
(03) 64371195; 61 3 64371195
http://www.qvmag.tas.gov.au/mesibov.html
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