[Taxacom] How many species have been reported only once

[Stephen Thorpe]

the issue of "new species" is related to this. To a taxonomist, "new species" = undescribed species, but to the general public "new species" = species not ever collected before now. But unless it is something big and obvious, how could you possibly know if it had been collected before? There is a quite unrealistic idea in the heads of some that collections are all fully sorted and up-to-date, and interlinked, so if you find something in the field you can easily tell if it has been collected before ...




________________________________
From: Doug Yanega <dyanega at ucr.edu>
To: TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU
Sent: Sat, 20 March, 2010 12:00:01 PM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] How many species have been reported only once

>Does anyone know of analyses that explore this matter, or have any 
>data to confirm the proportion of 'once only' species in their 
>sphere of expertise?

I believe a major aspect of this is that only in certain disciplines 
do people routinely *document* occurrences of "miscellaneous" taxa. 
The proportion of bee species which have had anything published on 
them *aside from their original description* (and not counting 
catalog records) is a rather small proportion, yet many of those 
"single record" species are things which can be found in collections, 
sometimes fairly abundantly; but people don't often issue "county 
checklists" for bees, while they DO for things like butterflies or 
birds or herps, etc.

The bottom line is that hoping to use literature records to determine 
a general pattern is going to be very misleading if one compares 
broadly across taxa.

Sincerely,
-- 

Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology        Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314        skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
              http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82

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