Taxacom: Minimalist revision of Mesochorus Gravenhorst, 1829

[Marko Mutanen]

Precisely, Mike!

Excellent points by Rod and Thomas too!

It is so easy to provide criticism instead of solutions. The fact is that (traditional) taxonomy is facing a serious crisis as it cannot provide credible solutions to the taxonomic impediment. The approach designed by Sharkey and colleagues has huge potential to provide an escape from this dead-end. Their approach may not have seen full maturation yet, but when was any revolutionary idea fully mature at birth? It already works very well. Criticism has had all focus on minor issues such as newly created synonyms (so rarely created otherwise...) and completely has completely ignored the huge benefits of the approach, both practical and conceptual.

We taxonomists have started describing species of this planet from the easiest end. After ca 270 years of hard work, perhaps 95-99% are left. They are gall midges, Nematods, parasitic wasps, microfungi etc. Groups that each may contain tens of thousands or even over a million species. As more species are described in any of such megadiverse groups, the number of required comparisons increases exponentially, making it all finally impossible to manage. Who believes that one day we will have a morphological key for one million gall midge species? I don't. But I believe that one day all or most of them are described and named, and that then they can easily be identified by their DNA. Elucidation of their life histories and connections to other species becomes straightforward too. The future of taxonomy looks bright if we only would let the field to flourish. The future of taxonomy is in DNA and genomics.

I hope that taxonomic community would recognize that for the survival of the field, we must find better solutions to the above-mentioned problems and stop making war. Taxonomy has been poorly funded largely because it hasn't been able to provide efficient solutions. Sharkey et al. have made a revolutionary and feasible proposal, and they would deserve much more appreciation by their peers than what we thus far have seen.

Sincerely,

Marko Mutanen

-----Original Message-----
From: Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at lists.ku.edu> On Behalf Of Michael A. Ivie via Taxacom
Sent: keskiviikko 30. elokuuta 2023 19.07
To: taxacom at lists.ku.edu
Subject: Re: Taxacom: Minimalist revision of Mesochorus Gravenhorst, 1829

While I am not a convert, can we restart this conversation by recognizing we have a problem?  I have discovered (collected and
curated) a couple to several thousand new species of beetles and other things in my career, but have managed to describe a couple dozen, and colleagues have added a couple dozen more.  I suspect I am pretty representative of 69 year old systematists with an active field program.  If our goal is to distinguish and share information of the type in this new paper, where they describe "158 new species and host records for 129 species," the approach those who work like I do is simply not going to work.  I will die with thousands of new species, their associations and characteristics still hidden from the people of the tropical countries where I obtained them.  Don't we have to discuss how our current system is failing to achieve our goals?  Isn't Sharkey et al challenging us to face this?  If we don't want to follow their path, don't we have to propose something equally effective rather than just blast them for not doing it our (admittingly failing) way?  I suggest that for ever criticism, an alternative be proposed.

Mike