[Taxacom] Taxonomy in Europe in the 21st century

[Doug Yanega]

To mix my metaphors, it seems to me that people are jumping on the 
bandwagon before the jury is in.

Torbjørn Ekre wrote:

>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?

Actually, if those 100 clusters have no morphological characters to 
back them up, that's a decent argument that DNA barcoding does not 
work for identifying species in midges, and should be treated with 
utmost circumspection, if not abandoned altogether. That sort of 
result is proving to be quite common in insect barcoding studies, and 
since insects represent some 90% of the biosphere, maybe we ought to 
reconsider whether barcoding has any real place in the global 
taxonomic toolkit? If barcoding has a 90% success rate on only 5% of 
the biosphere, and a 5% success rate on 90% of the biosphere (90% of 
which *still* has not been described), is it worth spending so much 
money and effort on it instead of supporting specimen-based alpha 
taxonomy? Or is it that no one actually *cares* whether we ever 
describe all the world's insects?

Gaël Lancelot similarly wrote:

>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.

90% of the species already described are insects, as are 90% of the 
*undescribed* species. There's very little evidence that mtDNA 
barcoding - in and of itself - EVER works reliably for identifying 
insect species; what work *has* been done in this regard is not very 
encouraging, and it looks like the technique has only limited 
utility, as an *adjunct* to traditional taxonomic delineation of 
species. If the "data and information" being provided via barcoding 
are misleading, then doesn't that only *interfere* with the task at 
hand? If the underlying premise is flawed, is it not possible that 
your conclusions and projections are also flawed? If the only 
organisms that can be reliably IDed using barcoding are vertebrates, 
then why are people staking so much of the future of taxonomy *as a 
whole* on the endeavor?

Sincerely,
-- 

Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314        skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
              http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82