[Taxacom] Why Taxonomy does NOT matter

[Stephen Thorpe]

>A case in point is barcoding. The concept has caught the public's imagination 
>and could bring megabucks to taxonomy<

(1) >The concept has caught the public's imagination<

Has it? Citation please!

(2) >and could bring megabucks to taxonomy<

Could it? It will bring megabucks to "systematics" in the broad sense 
(specifically, it will bring megabucks to those who want to do barcoding!) ... 
but will it do anything positive for *taxonomy*?

a case in point: A huge amount of funding is going to this:

>A Model Ecosystem for New Zealand: pilot project
Collaborative project funded through the Allan Wilson Centre
Personnel: Alexei Drummond, Thomas Buckley, Richard Newcomb, Nicola Nelson, 
Craig Millar, Nigel French, Mark Stevens, James Russell, Matt Renner, Jo Hoare, 
Dave Towns and Iwi collaborators.
 
We describe a pilot project to test the feasibility of phylogenetically and 
environmentally characterizing every species in a well-defined New Zealand Model 
Ecosystem using modern sequencing, informatics, distribution modelling and field 
ecology approaches. The project will involve collaboration with the Department 
of Conservation, and provide a long-term research programme structure for 
collaborative, interdisciplinary research projects at the intersection of 
ecology, evolutionary biology and genomics. <
actually, all it amounts to is "barcode everything" and forget about trying to 
identify the taxa ...

>environmentally characterizing every species<
HAHAHA... "every species" ...

barcoding may be a useful tool for some purposes, but it is like a cuckoo chick, 
throwing all the other chicks (tools) out of the nest (tool box) ...

do we taxacomers really know enough about the astronomy community to be able to 
state with any confidence what sorts of infighting there might be in that 
community, or the relative merits of the various subdisciplines ... I don't 
think I have seen a documentary on TV where taxonomists are protesting about 
barcoding either ...

Stephen



________________________________
From: Andrew Mitchell <Andrew.Mitchell at austmus.gov.au>
To: "taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Sent: Wed, 20 April, 2011 7:17:21 PM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Why Taxonomy does NOT matter

Hi All,

I think the real reason that astronomers can get huge grants and taxonomists 
can't is that taxonomists/systematists are such a fractious bunch they just 
can't help but shoot themselves in the foot by protesting vociferously against 
any emerging large initiatives. A case in point is barcoding. The concept has 
caught the public's imagination and could bring megabucks to taxonomy, but 
instead of seeing the possibilities, getting involved and working together to 
integrate and improve this fledgling system many taxonomists would rather fire 
shots from the sidelines.  Have you ever seen a documentary on TV where say 
radioastronomers slam gamma-ray astronomers as having no understanding of their 
subdiscipline? Of course not! They would rather work together to build the 
multi-billion dollar SKA that they can all use.

Now that I'm sticking my neck out I may as well add that funding models which 
favour "innovation" over all else are partly to blame. This is why we have so 
many different initiatives digitising taxonomy (checklists, species pages & 
images, the heritage literature) with limited interactivity - each successive 
proposal must demonstrate that it is doing something "innovative", i.e. 
different from existing projects.

OK, my flame guards are up so fire away!

Andrew

Andrew Mitchell
Integrative Systematist
Entomology

Australian Museum
6 College Street Sydney NSW 2010 Australia
t 61 2 9320 6346  f 61 2 9320 6042
www.australianmuseum.net.au


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