Taxacom: Minimalist revision of Mesochorus Gravenhorst, 1829

Douglas Yanega dyanega at gmail.com
Wed Aug 30 11:32:03 CDT 2023


Also speaking as a Commissioner:

The new paper adheres, at least in principle, to all the relevant Code 
provisions. I don't see anything we can *definitively* point to and say 
"Aha! These names are all unavailable, *without question*!"

The most questionable thing is, fairly obviously, their referring to a 
plate (a set of photos of each species) and a barcode *as a diagnosis*, 
when the Code says a diagnosis or description *in words* is required.

If there's going to be any real divisiveness over Code-compliance, then 
this is probably going to be the central point of contention.

I doubt that Taxacom is the most unbiased place to solicit people's 
opinions on whether they consider a set of photos and a barcode as being 
acceptable a diagnosis, but Thomas Pape is right about this much: we on 
the Commission can't make *really* major decisions regarding the Code if 
we're operating entirely in a vacuum. Feedback from the community, both 
for and against certain practices, is necessary to guide us going 
forward. Clearly, there are a number of people engaged in molecular 
taxonomy who we can expect will strongly advocate that the Code be 
changed to allow DNA sequences and photos to be used as diagnostics, and 
either dropping the clause about "in words" or simply adding sequences 
and photos to the list of acceptable methods of diagnosis. Clearly, some 
people will strongly oppose this. It's relatively easy to assess the 
extreme opinions, because the people at the extremes are always the most 
vocal. What's hard for us on the Commission to assess is how taxonomists 
in between the extremes feel. Are more taxonomists *inclined* to accept 
non-verbal diagnoses, or *inclined* to reject them? We really don't have 
a good method to take community polls that are unbiased and inclusive, 
so even our best attempts are still likely to leave us under-informed.

That aside for the moment, *speaking* *as a taxonomist*, the paper takes 
a few steps that worry me, and clearly worry other people.

Not even attempting to establish synonymies is a troubling practice.

Not even attempting to provide a key is a troubling practice.

The authors argue that the group under consideration is poorly-defined, 
poorly-studied, super diverse, and of no interest to anyone outside of 
an incredibly tiny number of specialists, so - in essence - all of the 
previous literature, and specimens, were already worthless as far as the 
scientific community was concerned. That is, there was no one alive who 
could reliably put names on neotropical Mesochorus, even if they had all 
the existing resources at hand. *In that very extreme context*, their 
basic argument is that starting over from scratch using DNA to diagnose 
species is the only practical way to improve the situation at all. That 
is, with their paper in hand, anyone in the future who wants to study 
neotropical Mesochorus will have a much better chance of figuring out 
what species they have in front of them. That might well be true.

Can we accept that premise, and philosophy?

For me, personally, the approach is profoundly troubling, BUT the 
context is something very alien to me, and *given that the context is 
their primary justification*, then I'm not really in a place where I can 
say something like "We can't stand for this!'. *Maybe*, if I worked on a 
group that was poorly-defined, poorly-studied, super diverse, and of no 
interest to anyone outside of an incredibly tiny number of specialists, 
I would feel that their approach was a brilliant path forward, where 
traditional taxonomy seemed like a hopeless murk, as Mike Ivie alluded to.

Maybe the only taxonomists whose opinions *really matter* here are 
people who work on things like mites, or nematodes, or gall midges, or 
thrips, or maybe even aphids, or scale insects, where just preparing 
specimens for traditional morphological analysis takes several hours, a 
small fortune in slides and coverslips and mounting media, plus 
literature that's almost impenetrable. I can imagine that the prospect 
of just using barcodes to perform IDs might seem, *to a taxonomist in 
that context*, to be a spectacular improvement in their ability to 
differentiate one species from another. There's a lot of biodiversity 
that's *excruciatingly difficult* to work with using traditional practices.

So, while I can be quick to criticize this paper, I can also caution 
that we shouldn't necessarily be so quick to render judgment, if we 
can't see things from their perspective. We can certainly oppose the 
practice for OTHER sorts of taxonomic groups, and I certainly would 
oppose it as a *general* practice, but if the world's braconid 
specialists are pretty much in agreement that this is what they want to 
do, then we might need to step back and let them work this out for 
themselves in their own particular context.

Peace,

-- 
Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314     skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
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