[Taxacom] source of quote about keys

[Robin Leech]

Well, Stephen,

Your reasoning tells me:
1. Keys are made for phylogenetic/classification purposes.
2. Keys are made for identification purposes.

When I taught taxonomic entomology and taxonomic botany,
I made it very clear to students that keys have one, and only one, purpose:
    IDENTIFICATION.

To try to plug new taxa into an existing classification is doing it 
backwards in my view.
I suggest identifying the features of the new taxon without reference to a 
classification,
THEN see where it might fit into the existing classification.

A key should not be used to organize anything.  It should be used to 
identify something.

But this does not help Steve Marshall with his quest.

Robin

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Stephen Thorpe" <s.thorpe at auckland.ac.nz>
To: "Steve Marshall" <samarsha at uoguelph.ca>; <Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Sent: Monday, August 31, 2009 3:47 PM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] source of quote about keys


> keys as “written by those who don’t need them for those who can’t use 
>  them”
The problem, of course, is that there are 2 very different purposes/users 
for keys, and they don't always understand each other. On the one hand, 
systematists use keys to organise information that they can use to place new 
taxa into existing classifications. The characters used often have to be 
"less than convenient". On the other hand, a wider audience wants keys for 
routine identification purposes, using the most "convenient" characters 
possible. Systematists are sometimes not very good at writing the latter 
type of key, and wider audience end users are often not very good at being 
able to effectively use the former type of key ...
Having said all that, Steve, I'm hoping for a good Howickia key from you 
very soon! :)

Stephen

________________________________________
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu 
[taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Steve Marshall 
[samarsha at uoguelph.ca]
Sent: Tuesday, 1 September 2009 12:07 a.m.
To: Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: [Taxacom] source of quote about keys

Dear Taxacomers,

I’m looking for the original source of a choice quote describing keys as 
“written by those who don’t need them for those who can’t use them”. I’ve 
used this line in my lectures since the early 1980s, and when I used it in a 
talk at the 2002 International Congress of Dipterology I attributed to “my 
old professor” (a nice way of saying I had no idea where I had first heard 
it). Walter and Winterton, in their excellent 2007 review of keys and the 
crisis in taxonomy, preface their introduction with the same quote and 
attribute it to Lobanov, 2003. Packer et al 2009 also preface their 
in-praise-of-barcoding paper in exactly the same way with exactly the same 
quote, but credit Packer (2008) for the origin of the quote. I’m not aware 
of any other usage of the line in print, nor am I aware of where it 
originated. It is possible that Lobanov, Packer, and I all came up with the 
line independently, but it seems more probable that it has been circulating 
for decades. Can anybody help pinpoint the original source?

Walter, D. E. and S. Winterton  2007. Keys and the Crisis in Taxonomy: 
Extinction or Reinvention? Annual Review of Entomology Vol. 52: 193-208

Lobanov, A.L. 2003. Keys to beetles and biological diagnostics. 
http://www.zin.ru/Animalia/Coleoptera/eng/syst8.htm

Packer, L., Gibbs, J., Sheffield, C., and R. Hanner 2009. DNA barcoding and 
the mediocrity of morphology. Molecular Ecology Resources 9:42-50.

Packer, L. 2008. Phylogeny and classification of the Xeromelissinae 
(Hymenoptera: Apoidea, Colletidae) with special emphasis on the genus 
Chilicola. Systematic Entomology, 333, 72-96.


Stephen A. Marshall
Department of Environmental Biology
University of Guelph
Guelph, ON, CANADA N1G 2W1


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