[Taxacom] Paper on one fly, but of general significance

John Grehan calabar.john at gmail.com
Thu Nov 28 09:17:01 CST 2013


But how would one know ahead of comparative evaluation whether any 'non
diagnostic' bits might be useful or not in the future? Maybe not for the
diagnosis of the individual species, but for future phylogenetic analysis
who knows? In my experience I have been able to avail myself of characters
that were illustrated by earlier workers even though the broader
significance of those features was then not known.

John Grehan


On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 1:03 AM, Stephen Thorpe
<stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>wrote:

> But Bob, taxonomy (and lots of other things) is all about highlighting
> important characters. It is highly unlikely that many currently considered
> nondiagnostic bits will turn out to be useful in the future, and even less
> likely that illustrating them before they are known to be useful will be
> useful!
>
>
> From: Bob Mesibov <mesibov at southcom.com.au>
> To: TAXACOM <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
> Sent: Thursday, 28 November 2013 6:31 PM
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Paper on one fly, but of general significance
>
>
> Not quite the reactions I think the authors might have expected. What I
> got out of the paper was this: "Digital imaging and image publishing are
> now quick, cheap and easy. Don't worry about over-illustrating, because
> 'non-diagnostic' bits might be more useful in future than they are today."
> The fly was just a case in point.
> --
> Dr Robert Mesibov
> Honorary Research Associate
> Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, and
> School of Agricultural Science, University of Tasmania
> Home contact:
> PO Box 101, Penguin, Tasmania, Australia 7316
> (03) 64371195; 61 3 64371195
>
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