[Taxacom] Ecological Errors Exposed [ was:The role of ADBC (NSF national digitizationsol...]

[Robin Leech]

Well, I can tell you that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is really 
pleased when I
supply a species name, and some biology, with spiders that come into Canada 
on foods
from US, South America, Central America and other places.  And it makes 
their job so
much easier - rather than standing there and thinking, "A spider!  Now 
what?"
For this month, grapes from California are the main spider transporters.
Robin
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Frederick W. Schueler" <bckcdb at istar.ca>
To: <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 2010 8:55 PM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Ecological Errors Exposed [ was:The role of ADBC (NSF 
national digitizationsol...]


> On 9/29/2010 10:14 PM, Bob Mesibov wrote:
>
>> The wider public also clearly derives benefits from the work of 
>> taxonomists: see any of the taxonomy/biodiversity promotions of the last 
>> X years for lists and case histories. 'a remotely comprehensive or 
>> reliable resource on the world's biota' is not high on the list of public 
>> benefits that taxonomists are aiming for, or they would be dropping all 
>> their other work to labour for the acronyms. Taxonomists deliver benefits 
>> more directly in their specialties. They do it by adapting what they know 
>> to particular problems or queries, and not by stripping what they know 
>> down to names and name uses to suit gigantic nomenclatural databases. Or 
>> have I misread you again?
>
> * this might be the place to insert this abstract (apologies if this
> article has already been TAXACOM'd).
>
> I will say that one time when I was acknowledged as what could have been
> scored in this as a taxonomic "authority" I'd never seen any specimens,
> none were saved, and I have no idea which species may have been studied...
>
> ==========================================
>
> Subject: Ecological Errors Exposed
> Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 08:23:21 -0500
> From: CNAH <jcollins at cnah.org>
> To: bckcdb at istar.ca
>
> CNAH ANNOUNCEMENT: The Center for North American Herpetology, Lawrence,
> Kansas - http://www.cnah.org 29 September 2010
>
> Alejandro Bortolus. ERROR CASCADES IN THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES: THE
> UNWANTED CONSEQUENCES OF USING BAD TAXONOMY IN ECOLOGY. 2008. Ambio
> 37(2): 114-118
>
> Abstract: Why do ecologists seem to underestimate the consequences of
> usingbad taxonomy? Is it because the consequences of doing so have not
> been yetscrutinized well enough? Is it because these consequences are
> irrelevant? In this paperI examine and discuss these questions, focusing
> on the fact that because ecological works provide baseline information
> for many other biological disciplines, they play a key role in spreading
> and magnifying the abundance of a variety of conceptual and
> methodological errors. Although overlooked and underestimated, this
> cascade-like process originates from trivial taxonomical problems that
> affect hypotheses and ideas, but it soon shifts into a profound
> practical problem affecting our knowledge aboutnature, as well as the
> ecosystem structure and functioning and the efficiency of human health
> care programs. In order to improve the intercommunication among
> disciplines, I propose a set of specific requirements that peer-reviewed
> journals should request from all authors, and I also advocate for urgent
> institutional and financial support directed at reinvigorating the
> formation of scientific collections that integrate taxonomy and ecology.
>
> A pdf of this article is available from the CNAH PDF Library at
> http://www.cnah.org/pdf_files/1612.pdf
>
> -- 
>
> fred schueler
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>          Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad
> Bishops Mills Natural History Centre - http://pinicola.ca/bmnhc.htm
> now in the field on the Thirty Years Later Expedition -
> http://fragileinheritance.org/projects/thirty/thirtyintro.htm
> Daily Paintings - http://karstaddailypaintings.blogspot.com/
>     RR#2 Bishops Mills, Ontario, Canada K0G 1T0
>   on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44* 52'N 75* 42'W
>    (613)258-3107 <bckcdb at istar.ca> http://pinicola.ca/
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
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