Taxacom: Minimalist revision of Mesochorus

[Nick Grishin]

Thanks Daniel, got it, n

On Thu, 31 Aug 2023, Daniel Gustafsson via Taxacom 
wrote:

>
>>  To me, the real questions are:
>>
>>  #1. how would you minimally modify the Sharkey approach to call it
>>  acceptable?
>>
>>  #2. what would be the estimated time invested in carrying out #1?
>>
>>  #3. what would be the estimated cost of it?
>
> It feels to me -- as someone who has never worked with wasps -- that there 
> are lots of characters *in the photos provided* that they could have just 
> described briefly in words (45 sentences each), and there would have been *no 
> controversy*. For instance (note: I have no idea what the characters are 
> called, so just making things up, but the point still stands):
>
> Mesochorus sietenueve -- colouration as in Fig. 97A, with lateral sides of 
> abdomen pale. Thorax uniformly brown dorsally (Fig. 97B). Wing cell X with 
> multiple (>10) short hairs, shape as in Fig. 97C, distal vein complete.
>
> Mesochorus unoceroseis -- colouration as in Fig. 127A, with lateral sides of 
> abdomen mostly dark and distinct pale spot dorsally. Thorax uniformly black 
> dorsally (Fig. 127B). Wing cell X with few (<7) short hairs, shape as in Fig. 
> 127C, distal vein broken medianly.
>
> Mesochorus unounodos -- colouration as in Fig. 134A, with lateral and dorsal 
> sides mainly pale except for narrow dark strip medianly on dorsal side in 
> distal half. Thorax pale brown with darker centre (Fig. 134B). Wing cell X 
> with multiple (>10) short hairs, shape as in Fig. 97C, distal vein complete.
>
> That took me ~5 minutes, much of which was just trying to find three good 
> examples of variable specimens. Extrapolated to 158 species suggests that ~ 
> 1.5 hours were saved by ignoring morphology. I cannot imagine that it would 
> take an expert on the group much more than a week or two to write 
> descriptions that are more useful just to avoid the controversy. They would 
> be minimal, and perhaps not be sufficient to identify and separate all 
> species, but they would have made the descriptions unambiguously available, 
> regardless of what you think about the Code and how the Code phrases things.
>
> The implication is that causing controversy was a goal in itself, similar to 
> the "change all the eponyms" paper a few months ago. How this is different 
> from trolling people for the lulz is beyond me.
>
> Thus, in answer to your questions:
> 1) Provide some small morphological characters that differentiate the taxa 
> from their closest relatives (which are explicitly identified in the paper), 
> they do not need to differentiate all species from all other species.
>
> 2) 12 weeks, maybe? If this had been the groups I work on, that's what I 
> would need to do similar work.
>
> 3) Depends on how much Sharkey (or his student) earns during the time. Other 
> costs are negligible.
>
>