[Taxacom] Why stability? - Revisited

[Anthony Gill]

Hi Rod,

Digitizing existing monographs is a start (and I would love to see some of
my own works captured in an appropriate electronic format that could
deliver repackaged information to a wider audience), but it doesn't address
the "dynamic" aspect (which implies continued input from taxonomists, as
new information come to hand), or support the creation of new monographs.
As it stands, there is little support for doing monographs, and perhaps
even less support for taxonomists that are so inclined.

Tony



On Fri, May 1, 2015 at 9:37 PM, Roderic Page <Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk>
wrote:

>  Hi Tony,
>
>  I’m not particularly disagreeing, but to be trite, I prefer the 'genius
> of “and” ‘. Many of the answers that I’m after do indeed exist in
> monographs, the challenge is getting those monographs digitised, then
> analysed in such a way that we can extract the information they contain. So
> I see at least some informatics as being a tool to deliver the contents of
> a “well-executed taxonomic monograph” to the widest possible audience.
>
>  Regards
>
>  Rod
>
>    ---------------------------------------------------------
> Roderic Page
> Professor of Taxonomy
> Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine
> College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences
> Graham Kerr Building
> University of Glasgow
> Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
>
> Email:  Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk
> Tel:  +44 141 330 4778
> Skype:  rdmpage
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>  Citations:  http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=4Z5WABAAAAAJ
>  ResearchGate https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Roderic_Page
>
>
>  On 1 May 2015, at 12:19, Anthony Gill <gill.anthony at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  Many of the issues you see as problematic, Rod, are actually delivered
> in any well-executed taxonomic monograph. One might invest more wisely in
> supporting monography, particularly in moving it to dynamic, electronic
> formats, rather than creating strawmen and putting all of our eggs in the
> strictly informatics and barcoding endeavours. I think we are headed down a
> dangerous course that will result in a very superficial understanding of
> biology. It is disturbing to see just how little monography (or taxonomy of
> any form) is now done in some of our major natural history museums ... or
> how few taxonomists are still on the payroll.
>
>  Tony
>
> On Fri, May 1, 2015 at 8:31 PM, Roderic Page <Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Nico,
>>
>> To return to you’re original post and question, a couple of quick
>> comments.
>>
>> As Stephen Thorpe alluded to, once aspect of instability is IMHO a
>> function of the burden taxonomic names carry. We would like:
>>
>> 1. human readable, globally unique names, that
>>
>> 2. also tell us something about relationships (e.g. the genus name
>> matters), and
>>
>> 3. carry some link to provenance (e.g., taxonomic authority, author for
>> new combinations, etc.)
>>
>> There’s pretty much no way to satisfy these requirements without
>> tradeoffs of one sort or another. For example, for reasons that I’ve now
>> forgotten I thought it would be fun to try and track down the original
>> species descriptions associated with a recent paper on the declining rate
>> of descriptions of new bird species (
>> http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/syu069, see also
>> http://eol.org/collections/116394 ). Cue much heartache as many of these
>> names have changed, and often discovering the original name (and
>> publication) is a world of hurt as people shuffle species between genera
>> and up and down between species and subspecies rank (e.g.,
>> http://bionames.org/names/cluster/642623 ).
>>
>> We have a naming system that is hugely unstable because goals 1 and 2 are
>> incompatible (at least, they are in the absence of any system to track name
>> changes, botanists do this quite well, zoologists don’t).
>>
>> Regarding your bigger point about your “extreme” system, I think this is
>> kind of where we are heading, especially when you think of things like DNA
>> barcoding. However, I suspect that what people will focus on is not the
>> long history of shuffling specimens between names and taxa, but what the
>> latest snap shot is "right now". Databases that make this explicit (GBIF -
>> taxa as sets of occurrences, NCBI and BOLD - taxa as sets of sequences)
>> will be useful and underpin actual research. Databases that make this
>> implicit (i.e., most taxonomic databases) will be a lot less useful.
>>
>> I love the taxonomic legacy as much as anyone, indeed I spend most of my
>> time trying to expose it as much as possible (hence http://biostor.org
>> and http://bionames.org ), but I suspect a lot of discussion about the
>> relationship between concepts will be of perhaps limited relevance except
>> in some (possibly spectacular) edges cases.
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Rod
>>
>> ---------------------------------------------------------
>> Roderic Page
>> Professor of Taxonomy
>> Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine
>> College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences
>> Graham Kerr Building
>> University of Glasgow
>> Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
>>
>> Email:  Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk<mailto:Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk>
>> Tel:  +44 141 330 4778
>> Skype:  rdmpage
>> Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/rdmpage
>> LinkedIn:  http://uk.linkedin.com/in/rdmpage
>> Twitter:  http://twitter.com/rdmpage
>> Blog:  http://iphylo.blogspot.com
>> ORCID:  http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7101-9767
>> Citations:  http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=4Z5WABAAAAAJ
>> ResearchGate https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Roderic_Page
>>
>>
>> On 28 Apr 2015, at 01:47, Nico Franz <nico.franz at asu.edu<mailto:
>> nico.franz at asu.edu>> wrote:
>>
>>
>> http://taxonbytes.org/thoughts-why-stability-in-nomenclature-and-at-what-cost/
>>
>>   I'd be interested in knowing if any scholarly works (I cite Atran)
>> support this. And other comments.
>>
>> Cheers, Nico
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>> Celebrating 28 years of Taxacom in 2015.
>>
>
>
>
> --
>  Dr Anthony C. Gill
> Natural History Curator
> A12 Macleay Museum
> University of Sydney
> NSW 2006
> Australia.
>
> Ph. +61 02 9036 6499
>
>
>
>


-- 
Dr Anthony C. Gill
Natural History Curator
A12 Macleay Museum
University of Sydney
NSW 2006
Australia.

Ph. +61 02 9036 6499