[Taxacom] Wikispecies is not a database

[Bob Mesibov]

("sometimes wonder how some of you manage to get anything else done!")

Not sure it's relevant, but fyi I spent 6 hours in the field with a friend yesterday, trying to map the parapatric boundary between 2 of the 19 new millipede species I'm currently describing. After a hot shower (it's wet and wintry here), specimen curation, etc (and digital tool use! double-checking collecting sites in GE, entering collecting-event and specimen data in databases, mapping the latest results in GIS...) and a hot meal, I opened a browser to see what's going on in the world, and one of my most-clicked bookmarks is Taxacom. It's good entertainment. (There's no TV in our house and never has been. "You watch television to turn your brain off and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on." - Steve Jobs)

Back on topic: I sometimes think that outsiders see taxonomy as a kind of disorganised, arbitary mess. Why isn't it like organic chemistry? They've got millions of discrete entities, too, which have to be named, described and investigated. And there's this great system developed and promoted by IUPAC. If you follow the IUPAC rules, you come up with a *name* which is a GUID, too! Sure, some people use other names, but there are cross-indices and online resources that link these, so that (e.g.) glycerin, glycerine, glycerol, glyceritol, glycyl alcohol, 1,2,3-trihydroxypropane, 1,2,3-propanetriol and propane-1,2,3,-triol all mean the same thing. So it's easy-peasy to hang all the properties tables (rather like biological descriptions), chemical reaction investigations (ecological studies), safety stuff (biosecurity), etc etc on the same entity. Why can't taxonomy get its act together the same way?

1. The boundaries between taxonomy's entities (species, genera, etc) aren't fixed.
2. The properties of taxonomic entities are not only exceedingly complex, but also variable in space and time.
3. The results of investigations on the same entity by two different investigators, or the same investigator at two different times, can be different, and this has nothing to do with reproducibility of results, but rather with the fluid nature of taxonomic hierarchies and the consequences of 2, above.

The best tools available to make sense of all this are inside human heads. It remains to be seen whether global agreement on taxonomic databasing standards, and machine storage and manipulation of taxonomic data will significantly improve the rate and fidelity of transfer of information between those heads, or whether they will significantly improve the workings of the wetware.

It is highly unlikely that they will significantly increase the number of heads at work on primary taxonomic problems, or the proportion of the world's taxonomic entities to be worked on by those heads. Although very interesting and entertaining, IMO this Taxacom topic is about non-urgent solutions to non-urgent problems in taxonomy.
-- 
Dr Robert Mesibov
Honorary Research Associate
Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, and
School of Zoology, University of Tasmania
Home contact: PO Box 101, Penguin, Tasmania, Australia 7316
(03) 64371195; 61 3 64371195
Website: http://www.qvmag.tas.gov.au/mesibov.html