[Taxacom] saturday morning fun

[dipteryx at freeler.nl]

Van: David Remsen (GBIF) [mailto:dremsen at gbif.org]
Verzonden: ma 29-11-2010 11:19

> - We use the Catalogue of Life because it is available and is  
> purported to be curated by a network of taxonomic experts.  
> We have the capacity to utilise additional and alternative 
> sources if they are made available to us. What are they 
> and where can I find them? And which sectors of the 
> Catalogue of Life are completely worthless?   

***
Whenever I encounter the Catalogue of Life I always recoil 
quickly, so I cannot provide an analysis in depth. But even 
at glance it is clear that the situation for Angiosperms 
is bad. It would help if they actually picked an existing
classification and then actually followed that, instead of
doing what they do now (it looks like a uniquely mangled 
version of the various classifications by Cronquist, with 
a key rank knocked out).

Finding a classification is not hard: a library will yield
copies of the various versions of the classification by
Cronquist, if that is to be used (since the final edition 
was published in 1988, this may not be all that good an 
idea). I suppose the best-known version is that of 1981.

And the various versions of the APG system are not hard 
to find either. The Botanical Journal of the Linnean 
Society even has a link on its site which allows anybody 
to download the APG III paper of last year (at 
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1095-8339.2009.00996.x/full) 
and of course the Missouri Botanical Garden 
has been maintaining a website devoted to in-between-
versions developments for many years now (at 
http://www.mobot.org/mobot/research/apweb/)

So, finding a classification is not an issue at all.

Paul