[Taxacom] Global biodiversity databases

[Stephen Thorpe]

Yeah, typical rhetoric! It will do nothing for the pace of species discovery, except perhaps slow it by sucking funding that could have otherwise gone to species discovery/taxonomy. Phylogenies are like today's newspapers anyway, i.e. irrelevant tomorrow ...
 
Cheers, Stephen


________________________________
From: Geoff Read <gread at actrix.gen.nz>
To: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz> 
Cc: "taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> 
Sent: Friday, 10 August 2012 2:06 PM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Global biodiversity databases

Here's another quote to think about.

"It [the comprehensive tree] may profoundly accelerate the pace of species
discovery by providing a common framework in which to place new taxa."
(project summary says)

I know how I discover new taxa - collect & examine. Pretty simple.

Putting all molecular data into a big hat and pulling out a one tree does
sound fabulous though. In one year ... gosh!

Geoff

On Fri, August 10, 2012 9:04 am, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
> Actually, no, I don't think it would be helpful in the present context. Of
> course the fine print will spell out a much more modest goal than the
> "sales pitch", but it is the latter that I was commenting on. It's kind of
> like McDonalds advertising, where the burgers always look much more
> impressive than what you actually get. If this project isn't going to
> produce a meaningful phylogeny of all named species, then it shouldn't
> claim to be going to do so, not even in tweets ...
>  
> But, looking at the link you posted:
>  
> Build and make publicly available the first complete draft tree of life,
> capturing the depth of knowledge about biodiversity on Earth
>  
> I still have a problem with the use of the term "complete" in this context
> ...