[Taxacom] describing new species

[John Grehan]

Ha, ha! Might be better off as a bright green moth at that.

John Grehan

On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 3:29 AM, Dr Brian Taylor <
dr.brian.taylor at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> It has been my view always that the distribution of insects is equivalent
> to
> the distribution of entomologists, or rather collectors!!!
>
> I note that John has been "altered" to a bright green moth - perhaps he
> meant "alerted".
>
> Brian taylor
>
>
> On 18/12/2012 23:39, "John Grehan" <calabar.john at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > What's rare or out of the way? Recently I was altered to a new moth that
> > has a 6 inch or so wing span, is bright green and a unique wing pattern
> > (unique in all Lepidoptera I suspect), but apparently never before
> > collected. In this sense it is 'rare' but in another sense it might be as
> > common as dirt where it occurs. Just got to get time to describe it now.
> >
> > A colleague of mine has recently come across several new species in
> Brazil
> > of similar size. The localities are not out of the way and the lack of
> > previous description may just be because no one was interested in them
> > before.
> >
> > John Grehan
> >
> > On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 5:11 PM, Peter Rauch <peterr at berkeley.edu>
> wrote:
> >
> >> Is it true that by and large new species (of insects) tend to be rare in
> >> nature and/or in out of the way places ?
> >> (I didn't think that this was close to being true ?)
> >>
> >> How would one know whether the specimen in hand was one of the 20 known
> >> species detailed in the Journal key, and not either a new species which
> is
> >> indistinguishable by the given key, and/or is "the other sex" of a known
> >> species (but not completely known by life form, geographic distribution,
> >> etc) ?
> >>
> >> The job of insect discovery, detailing, and understanding hasn't even
> >> begun, were we to ask about the state of our ecological knowledge, our
> >> biodiversity knowledge, whether we need screamingly larger amounts of
> >> resources to make those discoveries, and to have them then become useful
> >> information for managing our Earth.
> >>
> >> This is a story not one iota different from what some of us stated in
> >> Taxacom twenty years ago.  So, as Chris pondered, who cares --then or
> now ?
> >>
> >> Peter
> >>
> >> At 13:45 12/12/18, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
> >>> ...
> >>> So we can also ask the question: is general taxonomy/diagnostics
> relevant
> >> any more? It is true that, by and large, new species tend to be rare in
> >> nature, and/or in out of the way places, and so we should perhaps be
> >> putting due focus on documenting the common species properly in areas
> where
> >> we live. There is perhaps an assumption that this has all been done,
> but of
> >> course it hasn't (maybe in the U.K., but certainly not here...)
> >>>
> >>> Stephen
> >>
> >> and
> >>
> >>> On Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2012 21:30:22 +0000
> >>> Michael Wilson <wilsomichael at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> ...How many places in the world are you
> >>> able to identify 'common' species in many groups without special
> >>> expertise and knowledge of the literature? Would the Journal that
> >>> rejected Chris's paper publish a paper in which a key to say 20 known
> >>> species was given that made life easier for users- or is that not
> >>> considered science now?
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >>
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> >>
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> >>
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> >>
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> >>
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> >
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> these
> > methods:
> >
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> >
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> > your search terms here
>
>
>