[Taxacom] article on taxonomy - Boero comments

Sat Feb 27 04:22:37 CST 2010

Dear taxacomers,

Hesitant as I am to jump in to this thread - and I may live to regret it :) - I find myself in at least partial agreement with all points of view expressed so far, if this is possible. I can perhaps offer another perspective. In the discipline in which I work (marine research, therefore field data collection is expensive) there is a (sort of) acceptance that perhaps 90% (or often more) of the available funds are spent on data collection, and 10% (or more typically, less) spent on data management, including building systems to integrate and deliver the data to users in perpetuity, for uses that maybe cannot even be foreseen at the time the data are collected. I work in an agency with 600+ staff of which over 400 are scientists, which means that ideally we should have up to 40 data managers. In fact we have about 3.

Now let's apply some similar rationale to global taxonomy. One figure I have seen is that aroud 20,000 (or was it 25,000) new species are described in zoology alone every year, with no doubt a lesse but still significant number for other groups including botany, bacteriology and virology. I have no idea how many taxonomists' output this represent but let us say that a serious taxonomist might describe perhaps 20 new species per year on a long term average - maybe more, I don't know. That would equate to at least 1,000 full time (equivalent) taxonomists working globally, and presumably a considerable subset of these are being paid for their activity. Applying the 90:10 rule then this would logically create work for at least 100 full time data managers (or maybe 50 if the ratio is 95:5), but still a reasonable number.

My experience with the data management arm of the Census of Marine Life (a field program involving the input of some 800 scientists at last count) is that typically their staff has averaged around 3. So in this example at least, there is certainly not an over-investment in the data management (also citeable as biodiversity informatics) element. The only reason that anything at all meaningful has come out of it is that persons such as myself, not paid by OBIS or CoML, have volunteered some time out of our day jobs to assist OBIS without recompence because they believe that there are benefits in improving the information flow of this stuff to potential users.

Now I cannot answer for EOL, GBIF and the other "acronyms" except that I know their staff are small - typically in the tens rather than the hundreds, at any rate, so in the big picture I do not see this as outrageously high (although others may well feel differently here). Certainly ZooBank is essentially unfunded I believe, as is the GNI/GNA which is essentially a voluntary effort from staff already paid to do similar roles but keen to coordinate for improved efficiency and the "common good" (if of course you believe there is value in these efforts).

So maybe the above is some food for thought. I would also like to add a comment on the statement below from Fernando Boero concerning the effort he (as a practicing taxonomist) has put into (and I quote) :

"In order to describe new species, I need a HUGE library, and I informatized mine. Just the Hydrozoa are covered by more than 18.000 articles and monographs, and they are in a database in my computer, connected with the pdf files. My library is in my computer. I built this tool with a grant from the National Science Foundation, and I am paying a person to keep it updated."

This is *precisely* the type of work that a proper biodiversity informatics infrastructure would seek to leverage off, i.e. make sure that Fernando's work (with his consent) could be made available to other workers so that the effort never hs to be repeated, and conversely provide him access to equivalent efforts of others to save him additional work.

Just my 2 cents' worth, please feel free to blast me out of the water now...

Best regards - Tony

________________________________________
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Bob Mesibov [mesibov at southcom.com.au]
Sent: Saturday, 27 February 2010 8:37 PM
To: TAXACOM
Cc: boero at unisalento.it
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] article on taxonomy - Boero comments

Fernando Boero has posted twice to Taxacom but his posts were rejected for some reason. Here is the one I responded to, followed by his second:

"dear Bob
thanks for the appreciation. I have something to say, though.
In order to describe new species, I need a HUGE library, and I informatized mine. Just the Hydrozoa are covered by more than 18.000 articles and monographs, and they are in a database in my computer, connected with the pdf files. My library is in my computer. I built this tool with a grant from the National Science Foundation, and I am paying a person to keep it updated. If I describe a new species, I have to know the literature vary well, and no amateur has access to huge libraries, unless s/he is very rich or lives in the vicinity of an important museum.
And then, amateurs work just with the nice stuff. There are no amateurs who work on intestinal parasites.
Taxonomists must receive money to do their stuff. If we want to explore the depths of the ocean we need submersibles. Expeditions cost a lot. Or should we sit in our little rooms and wait somebody to bring us little corpses in little vials to inspect?
I fully agree that we have to stop reproducing, as humans, but we should reproduce A LOT, as taxonomists. This is a full time job, it requires lots of skills, and I am not happy of a future in which taxonomists will just be butterfly collectors (or shell collectors). I know no jellyfish collectors, though. And I study jellyfish.
We must get research money, and positions. Why not? What's wrong with it? The people who get big funding and prestige positions are not taxonomists, they are the ones who use the work of the naive taxonomists, who work for free, hoping to save the world with their hobby. The big projects on taxonomy are not managed by taxonomists, I list some of them, you can have a longer list attached here. These people ask for money to provide services for taxonomists, but there is not a single project on practiced taxonomy, taxonomists are supposed to work for free. What you are asking for is what is happening right now. Professional taxonomists are retiring, or they are confined in museums. No taxonomy in university curricula, no young people in our field. Biodiversity money is taken by non-taxonomists who use the work of taxonomists who are happy to work for free, or who have taxonomy as a hobby.
The main fault of the disappearance of taxonomy is ours!
I have received many messages, and some say just this: why asking for money? we have our salary!
We need money to:
collect specimens
store them while we are studying them
buy or maintain microscopes, from light to scanning electron microscopes
implement libraries and hopefully digitize them
set up molecular labs to help identification ALSO with these tools
of course computers, expensive software
travel money to go to meetings (I am organizing the seventh workshop of the Hydrozoan Society here in Lecce, taxonomists will gather here for two weeks, working and discussing together, they will come from all over the world)
money to pay technicians
money to support students

I can spend millions of any currency every year, or I can encyst and go through the corpses in my collection, at zero expenses. But I do not want taxonomy to encyst, I would like it to flourish, acquiring the same dignity of all other sciences, not being a science for amateurs.

I am caressing the idea of contacting all societies that gather taxonomists. Besides the Hydrozoa, also the Polychaetes will gather here in Lecce this year. Every taxonomic group has its own little society. We should make a list, and then a federation.
I have the name: Biodiversity is Us (BIU). And then we must act as a lobby, so to unmask the people who are selling our work for very high prices, trying to gather resources for real taxonomy. My problem is that I like jellyfish too much, and I have too much fun with them, I am not so eager in becoming a lobbyist. But this is why we are disappearing.... we have fun. I am a professional amateur. What's wrong if your hobby becomes your job, Bob?
nando
Ferdinando Boero
DiSTeBA
Universita' del Salento
73100 Lecce
Italy

Handphone:+39 3332144956
Voice: +39 0832 298619
Fax:+39 0832 298702
Home: +39 0832 316758
email: boero at unisalento.it

VISIT
Phialella zappai: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andymurkin/Resources/MusicRes/ZapRes/natphen.html
AQUATIC BIOLOGY: http://www.int-res.com/journals/ab/ab-home/
AQUATIC INVASIONS: http://www.aquaticinvasions.net/
CAHIERS DE BIOLOGIE MARINE: http://www.sb-roscoff.fr/CBM/
ITALIAN JOURNAL OF ZOOLOGY: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/11250003.asp
CIESM: http://www.ciesm.org/
FACULTY OF 1000: http://f1000biology.com/about/biography/5244821872453101"

"From: ferdinando boero <boero at unisalento.it>
To: Bob Mesibov <mesibov at southcom.com.au>
Cc: TAXACOM <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>, vincenma at muohio.edu
Subject: cheapnis
Date: Sat, 27 Feb 2010 10:29:33 +0100
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.1077)

dear Bob
I strongly disagree. Why we will never get big money to do taxonomy? There is big money already for taxonomy, and it is stolen by people who use taxonomists who work for free. Biodiversity funding should go to taxonomy. It is not a dream, it is a possibility. If we do not care, we will become less and less relevant, and will act as the Salvation Army.
By the way, I answered to taxacom, but my message was refused. So, please circulate it otherwise taxacomers see only your answer to my message and do not understand.
If we do not realize the importance of what we are doing, we will lose our battle.
Economists say that the value (they confuse value with price, I know) of something is linked to the willingness to pay for it. If the willingness is zero, then the value is zero. Of course, if something very important is usually almost free (e.g. water) then people are not eager to pay. We find it reasonable to pay for oil but would not like much to pay as much for water. But we cannot survive without water, whereas we survived some million year without oil. Now taxonomy is like water. Cheap. But it is becoming scarcer and scarcer.
I do not like the idea that our science is cheap! Not at all.
because it is not, if done at a certain level.
all the best
nando
Ferdinando Boero
DiSTeBA
Universita' del Salento
73100 Lecce
Italy

Handphone:+39 3332144956
Voice: +39 0832 298619
Fax:+39 0832 298702
Home: +39 0832 316758
email: boero at unisalento.it

VISIT
Phialella zappai: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andymurkin/Resources/MusicRes/ZapRes/natphen.html
AQUATIC BIOLOGY: http://www.int-res.com/journals/ab/ab-home/
AQUATIC INVASIONS: http://www.aquaticinvasions.net/
CAHIERS DE BIOLOGIE MARINE: http://www.sb-roscoff.fr/CBM/
ITALIAN JOURNAL OF ZOOLOGY: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/11250003.asp
CIESM: http://www.ciesm.org/
FACULTY OF 1000: http://f1000biology.com/about/biography/5244821872453101"

--
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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