[Taxacom] Somewhat OT, was Re: New species of the future

Wed Oct 30 15:02:32 CDT 2013

Seriously, do you really want to continue this dialogue about endings,  and complain that taxonomists are badly underfunded? It has been proven that endings do not do help taxonomy, rather the opposite.  Despite an urgent need, the latest since 1992 after the Rio conference, we  can't supply what we call the most relevant thing, a catalogue of the world's species. The only way out is to create an identifier for each of the taxonomic concepts we have (and these are not even clear, because who knows what's in our mind when describing a new taxon based on some characters and few materials citation that nobody can control, and despite a huge digitization effort in the US, are not linked to the descriptions, like this is happening in the Eupolybothrus paper).

The trend for funding we had over the last years in Europe for biodiversity infrastructure is moving quickly out of our reach. Not because we do not have big data. But because we can fight endlessly over an anachronistic code and it's interpretation instead of finding a solution to the problem (identifiers). If we do not get in Europe into Horizon 2020 funding, then we better fight about endings, since this cost nothing but a taxacom listserve. But our relevance will be diminished and it will increasingly be difficult to get back into making "our" taxonomy relevant again, despite a 250+ history. For hundreds of millions of printed records nobody will have an interest anymore, because it is not linked. And linking means identifier, and identifier does not mean a human understandable ending, but a name and its treatments, ie its descriptions that includes the links to the materials citation upon which a concept has been developed.

Don't mean, if the EU moves towards big data, the US will not. They have exactly the same political intention behind building a seamless cyberinfrastructure: Creating wealth through innovation based on the knowledge that can be harnessed by machine, as a new industry.

Finally, our genomics brethren are far more productive and they have a determination to move ahead, and have tools that are far more efficient and increasingly powerful, despite the discovery of ca 17,000 new taxa every year we claim, but cannot even list. If we are really important, than we have to make sure that we can link our content to theirs, and vice versa give them a chance to link to ours. And this are identifiers, not names that we have problems to understand, and a machine certainly cannot.

Donat

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Stephen Thorpe
Sent: Wednesday, October 30, 2013 8:29 PM
To: Ohl, Michael; Henrik Enghoff
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Somewhat OT, was Re: New species of the future

I wonder why cocacola is feminine in this case? Noun in apposition would have been better, i.e. Oxybelus cocacola

From: "Ohl, Michael" <Michael.Ohl at mfn-berlin.de>
To: Henrik Enghoff <HEnghoff at snm.ku.dk>
Cc: "taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, 30 October 2013 11:03 PM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Somewhat OT, was Re: New species of the future

And there is an apoid wasp from Morocco named Oxybelus cocacolae Verhoeff, 1968. In the paper, Verhoeff said that he was drinking a coke when the wasp came along. 

Michael

> Am 30.10.2013 um 10:43 schrieb "Henrik Enghoff" <HEnghoff at snm.ku.dk>:
> 
> .... and there is a millipede genus Cocacolaria Hoffman, 1987, named after the colour of the type species.
> 
> Henrik
> 
> 
> ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
> ¯¯¯¯¯ Henrik Enghoff, Professor of Zoological Systematics and 
> Zoogeography. - Curator of Myriapoda and apterygote + exopterygote 
> insects NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM OF DENMARK University of Copenhagen, 
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu 
> [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of John Noyes
> Sent: 30. oktober 2013 10:23
> To: 'Curtis Clark'; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Somewhat OT, was Re: New species of the future
> 
> Well, there's a beetle in Australia that tried to mate with them. Will that do?
> 
> John
> 
> John Noyes
> Scientific Associate
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu 
> [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Curtis Clark
> Sent: 30 October 2013 04:47
> To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Subject: [Taxacom] Somewhat OT, was Re: New species of the future
> 
> I've always wanted to name a species with the epithet pepsicola, dwelling in soft drink bottles.
> 
> --
> Curtis Clark        http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark Biological 
> Sciences                  +1 909 869 4140 Cal Poly Pomona, Pomona CA 
> 91768
> 
> 
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