[Taxacom] Taxonomy in Europe in the 21st century

[Gael Lancelot]

Dear TAXACOMers,

Thank you very much for the attention and care you've brought to EDIT's 
future scoping report. This is precisely the sort of healthy and 
inquisitive discussion we had hoped to spark. I will try to address some 
of the issues that were mentioned, as I was lucky enough to be present 
during the discussions which led to the report. Of course, I cannot 
reply to questions or quotes coming from other documents than our report.

I can assure you that we have never attempted to do any "science by 
fiat". I would be very surprised if I met anyone who was able to decide 
which way science will go in the next twenty years. What the 
participants to the meeting (the list can be found in the annex of the 
document at 
http://ww2.bgbm.org/EditDocumentRepository/Taxonomy21report.pdf) have 
endeavoured to do is to foresee where the current scientific trends in 
taxonomy will lead the field, and perhaps estimate which of these trends 
would be beneficial or not. EDIT's ultimate goal is to promote best 
practice and provide better tools and infrastructures for taxonomy, not 
to force anybody into anything.

The nature and definition of specimens was the subject of intense 
debate. While everyone agreed that it is vital that taxonomy relies on 
physical life forms, it is also true that, for example, palaeontologists 
have long worked with partial specimens, or even traces and imprints. 
Their taxonomic work is not less valid than that of people working with 
whole specimens (and even those aren't always whole: information is lost 
through preservation methods, or is only temporary when the specimen is 
a juvenile, or is simply incompletely collected - how many herbarium 
samples include roots?). In the end, work will be done with partial 
information, just as it has always been done. The trick is to maintain 
scientific rigour and validity on a basis at least equal to previous work.

Taxonomy is a wide and varied field, and taxonomists are a very wide and 
varied lot (indeed, there were significant disagreements during the 
discussions, which we hope the report makes clear). Taxonomy is at the 
same time about knowing what the world is, about refining technologies, 
about objectively agreeing on what it is we are studying, and, yes, 
about providing a service for the knowledge and management of the 
world's biodiversity. Barcoding is very useful for the last bit, 
somewhat useful for other bits, not at all for yet other bits. The 
members of the group felt that making identification more effective 
through barcoding (and other technologies such as sound analysis or 
digital image capture and analysis) would not only free more time for 
other taxonomical pursuits, it would actually provide more data and 
information for them. To put in in terms that have already been used on 
the list, if barcoding helps identify 90% of species *that are already 
described*, that provides more time and data to further study the 10% 
that are still fairly ambiguous, not to mention describing those yet 
unknown.

As a personal opinion, which you shouldn't take as EDIT's stance, I 
don't think that emphasising and improving the service-provider aspect 
of taxonomy will hurt funding for the other aspects. Sources that would 
only be willing to fund pure identification would not fund collection 
maintenance or specimen research in any case. On the contrary, it will 
open up new sources, if only because it will integrate taxonomists (at 
least those who are willing to participate) into other realms of 
research in biodiversity management, development and ecology. And that 
can't be bad.

Don't hesitate to contact me for any further questions.

-- 
Gaël Lancelot
Communication Officer
European Institute of Taxonomy
Tel: (0033)1 40 79 80 19
lancelot at mnhn.fr
http://e-taxonomy.eu