[Taxacom] GENERAL CALL TO BATTLE

[Stephen Thorpe]

 I am very much in favour of minimalist descriptions, provided that they are based on morphology. Undescribed species are a curse to study ecologically. At least for many insect groups, everyone knows that many undescribed species can be recognised by just a few simple morphological characters, so there is no need for a full description. Sometimes even just a good photo(s) will suffice. If such a species is subsequently found to be mixed species, based on characters not previously considered, then there are or should be simple protocols to deal with that, such as simply following the first author who uses the name for a chosen segregate of the mixed species. Naming is just naming. Other research on taxa can be done separately.Cheers, Stephen
    On Thursday, 11 February 2021, 06:43:21 am NZDT, Carlos Alberto Martínez Muñoz via Taxacom <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> wrote:  
 
  ***GENERAL CALL TO BATTLE***
Calling all Zoological Taxonomists to Battle!
Dear friends and colleagues,
We are going to need as much help as possible to fight the attempts of
Michael Sharkey, Daniel Janzen, Paul Herbert, and others to override the
ZooCode and to overwrite 250+ years of Zoological Taxonomy.
If you are willing to contribute your arguments and expertise to a response
paper, please contact me.
Those of you who might not be aware of this serious issue, please check:
1) Meierotto et al. (2019): A revolutionary protocol to describe
understudied hyperdiverse taxa and overcome the taxonomic impediment.
Deutsche Entomologische Zeitschrift, 66 (2): 119-145.
https://doi.org/10.3897/dez.66.34683
2) Sharkey et al. (2021): Minimalist revision and description of 403 new
species in 11 subfamilies of Costa Rican braconid parasitoid wasps,
including host records for 219 species. ZooKeys, 1013: 1-665.
https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1013.55600
See also a reply to Meierotto et al. (2019):
3) Zamani et al. (2021): The omission of critical data in the pursuit of
‘revolutionary’ methods to accelerate the description of species.
Systematic Entomology, 46: 1-4. https://doi.org/10.1111/syen.12444
We need as much help as possible! Please, share widely and invite others to
contribute! Let this be the hour when we draw swords together!

Carlos A. Martínez Muñoz
Zoological Museum, Biodiversity Unit
FI-20014 University of Turku
Finland
Myriatrix <http://myriatrix.myspecies.info/>
ResearchGate profile
<https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Carlos_Martinez-Munoz>
Myriapod Morphology and Evolution
<https://www.facebook.com/groups/205802113162102/>
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