[Taxacom] Taxonomy in Europe in the 21st century

[Torbjørn Ekrem]

Hi Bob

Bob Mesibov skrev:
> Hi, Torbjorn.
>
> You seem to be missing my main point. What disturbs me is not that
> taxonomists are doing barcoding, which undoubtedly has its uses. It's
> that they are trying to *sell* taxonomy with barcoding. *I* am not the
> person saying that taxonomy is all about providing an identification
> and data retrieval service. If you say you want money for training
> people and setting up the infrastructure to provide that service, you
> may well get money - for just that purpose, and no other.
>   
Well, in most barcode projects I know of (and certainly all that I am 
involved in) a substantial part of the funding is directed towards the 
work that taxonomists do, including training of students. A great 
portion of the potential funding of the International Barcode of Life 
Project will cover taxonomic work. Why not try to take advantage of this 
new tool (in addition to modern informatics and databasing) to bring 
taxonomy forwards as the science that focus on information of the true 
biodiversity? (Here in Norway most of the money for biodiversity studies 
are spent on a couple of common mammals, fish and birds)
> "And if DNA barcoding is only able to identify the 90-95% most common
> species, that's just fine with me: we can concentrate our efforts on
> the much more scientifically interesting 5-10%. Wouldn't that be nice?"
>
> It would be even nicer if I, as a taxonomist, were lucky enough to live
> in a place where 90-95% of the biota was known, and I could busy myself
> with the other 5-10%. Unfortunately, I live in a place where the
> reverse proportion applies. It's called Earth.
>   
I don't know, I find it very exciting that there is so much of the 
diversity that still needs to be reveald, but ok, could have written 
90-95% of the known species. The point remains the same: would you like 
to spend time on going through piles of common species or spend your 
time on the interesting objects that you find (e.g. cryptic species, 
possible hybridization, sympatric distributions, erroneous synonyms, 
etc.). If a DNA barcode project on midges in Norway reveals that there 
are 100 genetic clusters that we are unable to put a name on and 
possibly represents new species, is that not a decent argument to fund 
taxonomy on this particular group?

Torbjørn