[Taxacom] DNA barcoding

[Jim Croft]

On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 10:31 AM, Stephen Thorpe<s.thorpe at auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
> The key point though, is that barcoding actually depends on the
> continued activity of taxonomists, but there does seem to be a
> widespread impression that in some covert way, it is starting to "take
> over"...

That wouldn't have anything to do with the near hysterical evangelism
of many of the the barcoding proponents with their new-found silver
bullet, would it?

It will blow over and settle down, just as all the other 'latest
crazes' have and will do, maybe leaving a useful legacy for taxonomy,
maybe not. When all the shouting and arm-waving is done, given the the
purpose of taxonomy and nomenclature is fundamentally communication
between humans, the 'things' will still need to have pronounceable
names.  And until someone comes up with a pragmatic better alternative
to our current Linnaean binomial abominations, we are stuck with them.

I do not have great expectations of gemetic barcoding - in 3-5 years
whole genome and other tecyhnology will be the new latest craze and
any identification tool that requires expensive technology will never
never become universal. If you can not use it in a village in a
developing country it is not going to be much use on a normal human
level.  But, very much on the plus side, barcodingt does keep a focus
on taxonomy and systematics, it will maintain development of
technologies that will further our research in other areas and if we
do the curation thing properly it will generate an increasing legacy
of vouchered documented DNA aliquots that can be used for all manner
of interesting other things.

Not worried, not even all that excited - it is just another thing, and
there will certainly be others (I hope).  Just wish people would stop
being so shrill and agro about it...

jim

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