[Taxacom] Rocket science, not?

[Roderic Page]

Dear Bob,

This is a frustration that I share. These large projects are failing  
to keep up with the pace of discovery (something I complained about  
here http://blog.eol.org/2008/05/29/sos-state-of-observed-species/ ).  
There's no intrinsic reason for this, but I think it reflects the fact  
that some projects appear to be in stasis (uBio?), and others don't  
have a mechanism for rapidly aggregating information.

Regards

Rod


On 11 May 2009, at 02:37, Bob Mesibov wrote:

> Just an observation, not a criticism:
>
> I published a new genus (Noteremus) and two new species in it last  
> month in ZooKeys, which is gaily adorned with LSIDs, and thanks to  
> the superb efforts of Richard Pyle and others, you can find the  
> names today in ZooBank. You can't find them through the webpages of  
> ITIS, or the dynamic Catalogue of Life checklist, or uBio.
>
> By mentioning this here I may have wetted my chances of finding out  
> when they would have naturally gravitated to those aggregators. I  
> can, however, disclose the result of my silent watch on  
> Ginglymodesmus, which I published in Zootaxa in 2005. It's not in  
> Zoobank, or ITIS, or CoL or uBio.
>
> If you Google on Noteremus you get both of my specialist websites  
> (one on Tasmanian multipedes, the other on Australian millipedes in  
> general), ZooBank and ZooKeys. If you try Ginglymodesmus you get my  
> two websites, Zootaxa, a specialist-maintained Photobucket page and  
> an amateur Flickr group on Myriapoda.
>
> I agree with Rod Page that we're not talking about an either/or, and  
> didn't mean to suggest we were. It's a 'both', but bottom-up seems  
> to be growing vigorously while top-down is still working on data  
> standards.
> -- 
> 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
>
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---------------------------------------------------------
Roderic Page
Professor of Taxonomy
DEEB, FBLS
Graham Kerr Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK

Email: r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
Tel: +44 141 330 4778
Fax: +44 141 330 2792
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