[Taxacom] Rocket science, not?

Mon May 11 02:21:01 CDT 2009

A couple of points ...

All newly published names are not necessarily new species, although I'm
sure those published by Bob are OK ... ;-) ... so, they do not all need
a page on EoL. Unless, of course, everything gets an EoL page and some
pages just become deprecated to synonymy over time. Is this a realistic
option - sounds like it's close to the results from a search in Google
where one is never sure which of the many hits is the 'correct' one.

The CoL is an aggregator, dependant on the underlying database for
content, so it's unfair to say that a newly described species is not yet
in the CoL if it's not yet in the relevant contributing database.

I think we all know that UBio is in stasis because the driver moved to
another vehicle ... ;-)

Paul

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Roderic Page
Sent: 11 May 2009 08:05
To: Bob Mesibov
Cc: TAXACOM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Rocket science, not?

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
AIM: rodpage1962 at aim.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1112517192
Twitter: http://twitter.com/rdmpage
Blog: http://iphylo.blogspot.com
Home page: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html

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