[Taxacom] the hurdle for all biodiv informatics initiatives

[Don.Colless at csiro.au]

I don't often disagree with Stephen, but a lot depends on the state of local collections. While a CSIRO Dipterist, I spent a lot of my working time on just plain collecting, in the near certainty that much habitat would soon disappear and with it the fauna - as witnessed by the species collected, say, in southern sclerophyll forests in the 1930's, that can no longer be found anywhere. I regarded my job as being as much about getting good samples into our cabinets as describing what was there already. I could not, of course, resist putting on record some of the stranger elements of our fauna!

Donald H. Colless
CSIRO Div of Entomology
GPO Box 1700
Canberra 2601
don.colless at csiro.auRichard:
tuz li munz est miens envirun

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From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Stephen Thorpe [s.thorpe at auckland.ac.nz]
Sent: 24 February 2010 16:21
To: Richard Pyle; Rees, Tony (CMAR, Hobart); jim.croft at gmail.com
Cc: Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] the hurdle for all biodiv informatics initiatives

Richard Pyle said:
'Taxonomists are so poorly funded these days, that I'd rather see them (us) spend their (our) precious little time in the field (like I was this morning, on a Fijian reef), than waste their time sitting at a computer (like I am right now).'

Well, actually, I'd like to see them spending more of their (paid) time DOING TAXONOMY, which may or may not involve the field (there are plenty of undescribed taxa already in collections ...)

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