[Taxacom] Taxonomy has been solved :)

[Stephen Thorpe]

there is a real danger of the current biodiversity informatics boom leading to 
chaos

names themselves, although highly necessary, are not the key ... the key is how 
you put them together

I see a lot of data aggregation going on, but little useful integration

for example, CoL, without comment, uses a classification of Scarabaeidae which 
upgrades all the subfamilies to family status. Scarabaeidae sensu CoL is 
complete, but is only actually what most people would call Scarabaeinae. There 
is no data at all on the big scarabaeid subfamily Melolonthinae. An end user 
could very easily quote biodiversity data from CoL as if it were for the whole 
family Scarabaeidae, when in fact it is just for Scarabaeinae...




________________________________
From: Jim Croft <jim.croft at gmail.com>
To: Taxacom <TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Sent: Tue, 26 October, 2010 9:23:58 AM
Subject: [Taxacom] Taxonomy has been solved :)

@rdmpage
"Are names really the key to the big new biology?
http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2010/10/are-names-really-key-to-big-new-biology.html"

http://twitter.com/rdmpage/status/28714723238

_______________________________________________

Taxacom Mailing List
Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/taxacom

The Taxacom archive going back to 1992 may be searched with either of these 
methods:

(1) http://taxacom.markmail.org

Or (2) a Google search specified as:  site:mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  
your search terms here