[Taxacom] Fwd: Re: DNA barcoding

[dyanega at ucr.edu]

There may be a little misunderstanding evident in the following quote:

>Quoting Robert Hanner <rhanner at uoguelph.ca>:
[snip]
>> In fact, the barcode community is responsibe for the first concerted  
>>  effort to make structured linkages between GenBank Accessions and   
>> Museum Voucher Specimens.

This is NOT the same as work based on "legacy" museum specimens; the typical morphological taxonomist uses MOSTLY material which is from 30-100 years old, but DNA barcoding does not - unless you have references showing barcoding projects based primarily on OLD specimens, in which case many of us here would be very interested in seeing them. Since most of the material in the world's museums is from 30-100 years old, the barcoding community and the museum community are not entirely "on the same page" here. Most pointedly, if one cannot do a barcode for >95% of the existing holotypes, that leaves very little overlap between the *foundation* of traditional taxonomy and nomenclature - the type specimen - and the barcoding methodology.

The original quote, alluded to by Stephen, was in this context: the idea that basing names on old museum specimens was quaint and outdated, and barcoding represented a chance to start from scratch; i.e., that legacy material would no longer occupy the place of honor in systematics once everyone saw how barcoding worked, became convinced that it was indeed a panacea, and then (presumably) we all admitted that holotypes that cannot be barcoded serve no purpose, since no one can ever know what taxa they truly represent.

Maybe you can allay our concerns by answering the following question: how much of the funding for CBoL projects (such as the one you mention by Packer) goes to the maintenance and curation of un-sequenceable legacy material?

If CBoL support extends, blanket-wise, to the care of legacy material, and if this represents a real increase in support to institutions with large holdings of such legacy material, then maybe there isn't as much of an issue with "competing" for funding dollars as it would appear. But if the money is going to build *new* collections composed of *new* specimens, while existing museums elsewhere are closing their doors, then the "zero-sum" problems are genuine, and worrisome.

Sincerely,