[Taxacom] Extrapolation

[Richard Pyle]

"Plausible" doesn't mean "Inevitable".  If I like the idea, then I will take
steps to help move in that direction.  If I don't like the idea, then I will
take steps to avoid it.

For instance, I liked the notion of having all the historical literature
scanned and indexed by about 2020. I'll continue to work towards realizing
that dream.  But the part about fewer taxa and emphasis on processes over
products of evolution -- I'm not so keen on that.

To me, the process stuff is fascinating, and wonderful, and we'll have it
all figured out in the next couple of centuries (or maybe even the next few
decades).  But the loss of diversity has implications that span many
thousands, if not millions of years.

Fundamental properties of subatomic particles will still be around a hundred
years from now for us to discover and understand.

Evidence for the origins of the universe will still be around a hundred
years from now for us to discover and understand.

Celestial bodies within, and beyond our solar system will still be around a
hundred years from now for us to explore and understand.

Processes of genomics and proteomics will (very likely) still be around a
hundred years from now for us to discover and understand.

But whenever the last living member of a species (or species-like
monophyletic lineage) dies and rots away without any of its recent relatives
having been captured and preserved (with intact and sequencable genome),
it's the equivalent to burning the last copy of a book.

Following the book analogy: like genomes, the information content of most
books can be found in other books; but each book has a small fraction of
unique information contained within it. Burn the last copy of enough
different books, and you're starting to run the risk of significant (and
permanent) information loss.  In the case of genomes, that information has a
collective legacy of some 3-plus billion years, and each unique "species"
genome has a legacy of many thousands, if not a few millions of years (give
or take).  We're not even close to understanding the magnitude of that loss.


Maybe it really is trivial.  But if it's not, our descendants are going to
be pretty annoyed that we squandered all that effort on physics and
astronomy and evolutionary processes and such (stuff they will be in a far
better position to understand that we are now) -- not to mention what we've
squandered on our own intraspecific interactions (wars, etc.), while we
allowed the truly irreplaceable global information (i.e., the genomic
information content of Earth's biodiversity) to burn away while we still had
the chance to capture some of it.

We can't stop the decline?  I don't think "can't" is the right word.  The
kind of money it takes to launch a trip to the Moon or Mars, or the kind of
money it takes to build a particle accelerator would, I think, go a HELL of
a long way toward building the card catalog to the "Library of Life" (again
with the book analogy).  It's just a matter of shifting the priorities of
the people with the purse strings.

Aloha,
Rich



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bob Mesibov [mailto:mesibov at southcom.com.au] 
> Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2008 3:59 PM
> To: Richard Pyle
> Cc: 'TAXACOM'
> Subject: RE: [Taxacom] Extrapolation
> 
> If it's a plausible development, then it doesn't matter which 
> side you're on. That's like someone 50 years ago being 
> for/against pre-sliced bread or pop-up toasters.
> 
> On a personal level, you and I are both involved in 
> discovering previously unknown forms of life (fish and 
> millipedes, respectively).
> The number of discoverables is declining thanks to a range of 
> human impacts on the planet, and public support for discovery 
> (money and new discovery recruits) is declining, thanks in 
> part to competition from the ever-expanding tree-building industry.
> 
> We can't stop either decline. What we *can* do is make the 
> documentation of discovery much more efficient (and you 
> personally have done a fantastic job in expediting this), and 
> commit ourselves to salvaging discoverables before they disappear.
> 
> Within this niche in the scientific environment, we can do a 
> good and satisfying job in coming years. The rest of 
> systematics can develop however it likes.
> --
> 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
> ---
>