Taxacom: Minimalist revision of Mesochorus Gravenhorst, 1829

Carlos Alberto Martínez Muñoz biotemail at gmail.com
Wed Aug 30 06:42:46 CDT 2023


Hi Rod,
Please, invest some time in reading the whole Meierotto et al. saga of
articles so that you can better assess what "the authors are simply
saying", and how the wording has changed as they gain terrain. Maybe some
of my statements four years ago seemed hyperbolic and now they are a
reality, because I saw through the true intentions of Sharkey et al from
the very beginning. In four years from now, you will definitely wish that
my statement of today was "hyperbolic". Sharkey et al counts on you
thinking that way.

Regarding your statement and back to my previous email:
"By my reading the authors are simply saying that creating 2-3 synonyms for
10 existing names is a small price to pay for being able to document the
other species in the large genus in a biologically rich region."
can be rewritten as:
" By my reading, creating 2 million synonyms for 10 million existing
species is a small price to pay for being able to document the other
species in a biologically rich planet."
The answer is no, no new synonym is a small price to pay and it just passes
the burden along to the coming generations of taxonomists. But if we are
okay with passing the burdens of nature destruction, pollution,
overconsumption, and global warming to the coming generations, then we
should be probably okay with passing along the taxonomic burden as well.
If 10 million unique identifiers are needed to classify and identify life
forms quickly, they can be produced using an alternative system. There is
no need to hijack the Codes of Nomenclature and produce synonyms in the
process. New Code-compliant scientific names should be reserved for those
species for which due diligence has been done.
Cheers,
Carlos


On Wed, Aug 30, 2023 at 11:38 AM Roderic Page <Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk>
wrote:

> Hi Carlos,
>
> I’m reminded of Charles Godfrey’s wonderful essay "Taxonomy as Information
> Science” https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbiostor.org%2Freference%2F250587&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C134ea0612c564f65ecf908dba94e415e%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638289925794594100%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=%2BgYdvHVZg7FoN2WRb1dybLQGAjb9dWaHx0PxKeLzy2o%3D&reserved=0 where he writes (p. 174):
>
> A depressing amount of entomological taxonomy, especially in Europe,
> consists of long and lengthy discussions of this type of taxonomic
> book-keeping (to avoid this, some of the best taxonomists I know work only
> in the tropics where they can be biologists rather than archivists).
>
> I think the paper "Minimalist revision of Mesochorus Gravenhorst...”
> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Frevistas.ucr.ac.cr%2Findex.php%2Frbt%2Farticle%2Fview%2F56316&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C134ea0612c564f65ecf908dba94e415e%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638289925794594100%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=lDHsEByL%2BiEpYcf1Dz%2B6URtSG3IUjWTOMsZldvrJLEc%3D&reserved=0 (the DOI
> doesn’t seem to be registered yet) makes a reasoned case for “ignoring"
> earlier work.
>
> By my reading the authors are simply saying that creating 2-3 synonyms for
> 10 existing names is a small price to pay for being able to document the
> other species in the large genus in a biologically rich region.
>
> It is a long time since I’ve done actual taxonomy, but I’m sure many
> researchers are faced with names they can’t place, descriptions that are
> nearly useless, specimens that are missing (or type series that comprise
> multiple taxa). At some point we make a judgement call about whether we
> invest time in resolving this, or put them to one side in the hope that
> perhaps we can resolve it later (do we want to be biologists or
> archivists?).
>
> The authors point out that sequencing the Dasch types (if feasible) would
> be one way to discover whether there are synonyms.
>
> Your statement that “all is set to completely overwrite the current
> morphological system and names” seems hyperbolic at best. We are in an
> interesting time where new technologies present new opportunities (and
> challenges), and we are figuring out how best to proceed (as we do every
> time new technologies come along and force us to rethink things).
>
> Personally I’m going to re-read Charles’ essay, and ponder how this debate
> (and others in our field) address his assessment (p. 172) that:
>
> What matters is not only how interesting the question is, the potential
> extra science that the research may leverage, but how capable the subject
> is of delivering useful output. I think taxonomy is suffering not because
> it is any less interesting or important than it was fifty years, but
> because it is largely failing to deliver.
>
> Regards,
>
> Rod
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> Roderic Page
> Professor of Taxonomy
> School of Biodiversity, One Health, & Veterinary 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
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> ResearchGate https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Fprofile%2FRoderic_Page&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C134ea0612c564f65ecf908dba94e415e%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638289925794750314%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=Phhhz0a7PPRaWhpAQpJcm8ZPxbjLqEQX0YhaGGIFO28%3D&reserved=0
> On 30 Aug 2023 at 09:11 +0100, Carlos Alberto Martínez Muñoz via Taxacom <
> taxacom at lists.ku.edu>, wrote:
>
> Dear Taxacomers,
> For your enjoyment, here is the latest episode of the Meierotto *et al.*
> (2019) saga, published six days ago, on August 24, 2023:
> Sharkey *et al*. (2023): Minimalist revision of *Mesochorus* Gravenhorst,
> 1829 (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae: Mesochorinae) from Área de Conservación
> Guanacaste, Costa Rica, with 158 new species and host records for 129
> species. *Revista de Biología Tropical*, 71 (S2): 1-174.
> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi.org%2F10.15517%2Frev.biol.trop..v71iS2.2023&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C134ea0612c564f65ecf908dba94e415e%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638289925794750314%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=8DJdZR2rQMYbUDsQrreFtcA3eqFTJbFVz1Dra2o6DNA%3D&reserved=0
>
> You will enjoy reading through the logical fallacies in the introduction.
> But more importantly, this paper contains what I told you and warned you
> would happen, since the Meierotto *et al.* (2019) paper, if you failed to
> act swiftly and properly. Now it is here. Read:
> "Dasch (1974) treated a very small proportion of ACG *Mesochorus* species,
> therefore few synonyms will be generated in our current effort which does
> not attempt to match his names with Costa Rican specimens."
> There you have a primarily morphological system finally openly hijacked by
> a parallel taxonomic system which wants to use the naming rules of the
> current system for convenience.
> "In other words, it is likely that we are generating two or three synonyms
> (0.23 x 10) of these Dasch species."
> So, a complete disregard for priority and open acceptance of synonym
> creation, as I warned four years ago. When things like this can go through
> and get published, even when they threaten universality and stability, then
> you realize that we don't need a ZooCode anymore. Given that the authors,
> reviewers, and editor accepted 23% synonym creation as good, then all is
> set to completely overwrite the current morphological system and names, as
> the 2 million species described versus 10 million species estimate is just
> 20%. If we estimate a total of 80 or 100 million species, then creating 2
> million synonyms for the existing names goes down to a "negligible" 2%
> synonymy threshold. Completely acceptable, isn't it?
>
> To the commissioners who have tolerated this, because of their conflict of
> values (not of interest) based on the incorrect assumption that species
> need scientific names to be assessed and protected: anyone that has read
> through the IUCN Red List methodology knows that this is not true, and
> there are countries with legislation in place to protect species even if
> they don't have scientific names. You better update yourselves.
>
> By the way, at least one of the species has two original spellings,
> *Mesochorus
> dotres* (which should be declared an incorrect original spelling) and
> *Mesochorus
> dostres* (the supposedly correct spelling).
>
> Now I will just sit here and contemplate the devastation.
>
> Am I forgetting to emphasise something? Ah, yes: "I told you".
>
> Yours in horror,
> Carlos Martínez
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