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3 - The perils of addressing long-term challenges in a short-term world: making descriptive taxonomy predictive

from Section 1 - Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2011

By
R. M. Bateman
Edited by
Trevor R. Hodkinson ,
Michael B. Jones ,
Stephen Waldren  and
John A. N. Parnell
R. M. Bateman
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham, UK
Trevor R. Hodkinson
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Dublin
Michael B. Jones
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Dublin
Stephen Waldren
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Dublin
John A. N. Parnell
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Dublin
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Summary

Abstract

Increased political interest in addressing environmental issues, notably climate change, conservation and landscape restoration, has the potential to strengthen the focus, integration and profile of systematic biology. In particular, it could rescue descriptive taxonomy from its current state of near-extirpation in the developed world. However, exploiting this opportunity will require greater consensus than the systematics community has previously achieved, together with the determination to resist exaggerating the value of existing systematic data and of technological advances such as DNA barcoding and web-based identification. Descriptive taxonomy erects hypotheses of species existence that must be tested using other categories of data if systematics is to become a genuinely predictive enterprise. Prediction followed by recommendations for adaptation and/or mitigation, each essential to address the consequences of climate change, are possible only with good knowledge of the species and ecosystems under scrutiny. Taxonomic data alone are of little value, but, equally, non-taxonomic data are rarely of value in the absence of a taxonomic framework. Instead of seeking shortcuts to, or even substitutes for, taxonomy in the hope of accelerating the rate of superficial species description (and redescription), the climate change challenge is best addressed by obligatorily increasing the rigour required in taxonomic descriptions. This especially requires: (1) escaping from traditional typology by prescribing minimum levels of both morphological and molecular data via obligatory online registration of species; (2) requiring taxonomists to state the species concept(s) employed in each study; (3) improving feedback to taxonomy from identifications performed by non-systematists; and (4) prioritising groups for taxonomic study according to the importance of the questions that the study group can address.

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Climate Change, Ecology and Systematics , pp. 67 - 96
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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