Taxacom: replacing un-sequenceable types (was Re: Minimalist revision of Mesochorus)

Fri Sep 1 11:13:36 CDT 2023

One of the fundamental problems is that funders love to fund science without people, because people are expensive (see the decreasing number of museum scientists in most museums). Amateur entomologists and citizen scientists were seen as solutions for a while (and probably still), now AI could help us to avoid paying these pesky scientists and achieve better results. They are certainly better because when nobody is there to check AI results any more, how should we know otherwise.
I hope it will never get to this extreme
In an ideal world, we need more people engaged in taxonomy, more people educated, more people paid a decent salary, more people seeing it as a viable career choice, more people in administrations learning to appreciate the taxonomic endeavor. It is a people issue, and AI cannot and should not be more than a support tool.

Frank

Dr. Frank-Thorsten Krell

Senior Curator of Entomology, Editor-in-Chief
Commissioner and Councillor, International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature
Department of Zoology
Denver Museum of Nature & Science
2001 Colorado Blvd
Denver, Colorado 80205-5798, U.S.A.
Frank.krell at dmns.org
Phone 303.370.8244
Fax 303.331.6492
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-----Original Message-----
From: Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at lists.ku.edu> On Behalf Of KD Dijkstra via Taxacom
Sent: Friday, September 1, 2023 9:55 AM
To: Peter Uetz <uetz at vcu.edu>
Cc: taxacom at lists.ku.edu
Subject: Re: Taxacom: replacing un-sequenceable types (was Re: Minimalist revision of Mesochorus)

Hi all,

This conversation reminds me of a joke a friend made, who works in exactly the field that Peter describes: "once we've taught the robots to identify species, we'll teach them to love nature for us."

AI and genomics are wonderful tools. Maybe Peter is overselling their potential a bit, but that isn't the biggest problem. Nor is it perhaps a bit sad to hand over all the fun and experience to machines. The problem is that even if it's a fantasy that AI and genomics can do all the work for us, funders and institutes like to believe such fantasies and won't want to be left behind. So the resources will be skewed towards these techniques and the corresponding taxonomic expertise will continue to hobble behind.
Just as it did with previous and equally wonderful (but maybe also oversold and over-embraced) innovations like DNA-barcoding, informatics, meta-barcoding etc. etc.

I really appreciate all the excellent contributions that are being made to this important discussion, but the further we get into moving our discipline into sequencers and processors, the more we need to make clear that, ultimately, we're doing this for humans and so need to invest at least as much in humans...

Feel free to ignore my philosophizing, just needed that off my chest!

Cheers, KD

_________________________________________
*KD (Klaas-Douwe) B Dijkstra*
dragonfly popularizer kddijkstra.nl
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On Fri, 1 Sept 2023 at 17:14, Peter Uetz via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu>
wrote:

>
> In the long run, AI will be able to take into account environmental 
> factors, age, etc.
> Hence, it will be able to predict species too, including (potential) 
> gene flow etc.
> It’s admittedly everyone’s guess when this will happen (but probably 
> sooner than many think).
>
> And yes, nature guides will be replaced by AI too, even without DNA.
> It’s happening already (iNaturalist, Seek, etc.)
>
> You will need both DNA and images to predict phenotypes and species, 
> of course.
>
>
>
> > On Sep 1, 2023, at 10:44 AM, Lücking, Robert <R.Luecking at bo.berlin>
> wrote:
> >
> > Dear all,
> >
> > do not forget that taxonomy has a lot of dimensions going far beyond
> science. I don't think you can sell DNA-only-based taxonomy to 
> non-scientists, policy makers etc. Nature guides continue to be a 
> multi-billion dollar business and I do honestly not imagine these to 
> feature images of genome sequences in the future. So while it is 
> necessary to support taxon concepts with molecular data, the 
> morphological portion of taxonomy is equally required. Or can any of 
> you imagine a tour where you, as an expert, tell people: 
> "Unfortunately I cannot identify this critter unless I have a genome sequence..."
> >
> > We already have this problem: students start "taxonomy" through lab 
> > work
> but have never seen the critters in situ, leading to statements such as:
> "Oh, that's what I have been sequencing... I had no idea...".
> >
> > Also: many species are polymorphic, plus there are external 
> > influences,
> plus ontogeny and age, meaning the phenotype cannot be predicted from 
> the genotype alone, not even with AI.
> >
> > Expert taxonomists can still identify (most of) their species and 
> > some
> have predicted what we now see with molecular data many decades ago 
> based on morphology and anatomy and other data alone. The art of 
> taxonomy is not, and is not going to be, to predict phenotype from 
> genotype, but continues to be to predict species from phenotype, 
> taking into account all available information.
> >
> > Robert
> >
>
>
>
> ————————————————————————————————————
> Peter Uetz
> Center for Biological Data Science
> (formerly Center for the Study of Biological Complexity) Virginia 
> Commonwealth University Richmond, VA 23284 USA
>
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