The New Taxonomy (Systematics Association Special Volume)

258 Pages·2008·3.478 MB·English

by  Quentin D. Wheeler

The Systematics Association Special Volume Series 76
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The Systematics Association Special Volume Series
Series Editor
Alan Warren
Department of Zoology, The Natural History Museum
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The new taxonomy / editor, Quentin D. Wheeler.
p. cm. -- (The systematics association special volume series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8493-9088-3 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Biology--Classification. 2. Evolution (Biology) I. Wheeler, Quentin, 1954- II.
Title. III. Series.
QH83.N49 2008
578.01’2--dc22 2008004860
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Contents
Preface......................................................................................................................vii
The Editor .................................................................................................................ix
Contributors ..............................................................................................................xi
1 Introductory: Toward the New Taxonomy ...........................................1
Quentin D. Wheeler
2 Networks and Their Role in e-Taxonomy...........................................19
Malcolm J. Scoble
3 Taxonomy as a Team Sport ................................................................33
Sandra Knapp
4 Planetary Biodiversity Inventories as Models for the New
Taxonomy ...........................................................................................55
Lawrence M. Page
5 On the Use of Taxonomic Concepts in Support of Biodiversity
Research and Taxonomy ....................................................................63
Nico M. Franz, Robert K. Peet and Alan S. Weakley
6 International Infrastructure for Enabling the New Taxonomy:
The Role of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) .....87
Larry Speers and James L. Edwards
7 DNA Sequences in Taxonomy: Opportunities and Challenges .........95
Rudolf Meier
8 Animal Names for All: ICZN, ZooBank and the New
Taxonomy .........................................................................................129
Andrew Polaszek, Richard Pyle and Doug Yanega
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9 Understanding Morphology in Systematic Contexts: Three-
Dimensional Specimen Ordination and Recognition .......................143
Norman MacLeod
10 Taxonomic Shock and Awe ..............................................................211
Quentin D. Wheeler
Index ......................................................................................................................227
Preface
This book is based on papers presented at the 2005 biennial meeting of the System-
atics Association in Cardiff, Wales. Some speakers at the symposium, titled ‘The
New Taxonomy’, did not submit chapters, including Dennis Stevenson of the New
York Botanical Garden and James Woolley of Texas A & M University, but neverthe-
less delivered excellent presentations. Some coauthors who were not present at the
meetings contributed to chapters in this book.
The symposium had an unusually high level of positive energy, something com-
mented upon by numerous members of the audience. Given the current state of sup-
port for and recent history of taxonomy, many meetings lament the inadequacy of
funding for taxonomy education and research, species inventories, collection growth
and development, opening access to research resources and creating the digital
instruments and elements of cyberinfrastructure desperately needed. Taxonomists
and various reports about taxonomy in both the UK and USA have pointed out that
most of the limited annual funding goes to support molecular phylogenies rather than
integrative data-sets, revisions, monographs or improved classifications and names.
In these years of Linnaean celebrations, 2007 and 2008 (the 300th anniversary
of the birth of Carolus Linnaeus and the 250th anniversary of the publication of the
10th edition of Systema naturae, respectively), it is appropriate that we reflect on the
accomplishments, strengths and promise of taxonomy. The Cardiff symposium and
this volume invited participants to imagine what a positive future might look like for
taxonomy, assuming that its fortunes change. The results have been truly heartening
and inspiring.
It was about 40 years ago that the entomologist Howard Ensign Evans (1969)
pointed out how little we knew of our own planet as we ventured into the space
age. And it has been more than 20 years since E.O. Wilson (1985) captured our
imaginations by comparing how little we know of Earth’s species compared to sub-
atomic particles or astronomical bodies. Wilson emphasized that we cannot say how
many species are living today even within an order of magnitude. This sobering
observation is, sadly, as true today as it was then. In spite of international treaties
and great attention to deforestation and rates of extinction, we have made very little
progress in organizing or funding a serious scientific response to the biodiversity
crisis. Regretfully, attempts to do so are perceived as threats to funds available for
molecular phylogenetics and conservation biology; rather, they should be welcomed
as the advances in science that must logically precede and underpin any long-term
strategies to reconstruct the great tree of life or save as much biological diversity as
possible.
While there are many biological and environmental sciences that must be funded
for a multitude of reasons, it is a simple fact that no investment in science is more
urgent, timely or certain to be repaid in leaps of knowledge and understanding than
funding taxonomy, taxonomic collections and a taxonomy-specific cyberinfrastruc-
ture. This must be done while remaining cognizant of the nonpareil contributions of
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viii Preface
Linnaean classifications and names and of their role, when informed by cladistics, as
biology’s general reference system (Hennig, 1966; Nelson and Platnick, 1981). The
greatest biological ‘big science’ project ever enjoined–an inventory of all the spe-
cies of a planet launched by Linnaeus in the middle eighteenth century–and one of
the greatest theoretical revolutions of the twentieth century–Hennig’s phylogenetic
systematics–must be rejoined if we are to learn enough about our world’s diversity
to understand its evolution and functions and if we are to pass a legacy of specimens
and knowledge on to future generations. Hennig’s revolution was stopped short of
its potential (Nelson, 2004), as was Linnaeus’s project. This volume is a tribute to
them both and a plea to society to reinvest in the most fundamental of all biological
sciences.
The introductory chapter presents the thesis that the decline in prestige and sup-
port for taxonomy can be traced from the beginnings of the New Synthesis and, in
particular, from Huxley’s The New Systematics, published as the first special volume
of the Systematics Association in 1940. Thus, it is poetic justice that this volume,
The New Taxonomy, is now the latest special volume of the Systematics Association.
This may be seen as a deliberate attempt to reverse the erosive effects of the new
systematics and to modernize and spark a revival in descriptive taxonomy before it
is too late to explore and document the millions of species that are the results of bil-
lions of years of evolution. This book is a call to arms for the taxonomy and museum
communities to come together and to organize, plan, innovate and initiate the most
ambitious period of exploration in the long history of taxonomy.
I thank the Systematics Association for supporting both the symposium and the
book, the contributors who have shared their passion and vision for taxonomy and
the audience at the Cardiff meetings for inspiring discussion. And thanks also to my
wife, D. Marie Wheeler, for assistance and encouragement while I was editing the
volume.
Quentin D. Wheeler
Tempe, Arizona
RefeRences
Evans, H.E. (1969) Life on a Little-Known Planet, Dutton, New York, 318 pp.
Hennig, W. (1966) Phylogenetic Systematics, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, IL,
263 pp.
Huxley, J. (1940) The New Systematics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 583 pp.
Nelson, G. (2004) Cladistics: Its arrested development. In Milestones in Systematics (eds
D.M. Williams and P.L. Forey), CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, pp. 127–147.
Nelson, G. and Platnick, N.I. (1981) Systematics and Biogeography: Cladistics and Vicari-
ance, Columbia University Press, New York, 568 pp.
Wilson, E.O. (1985) The biological diversity crisis: A challenge to science. Issues in Science
and Technology, 2: 20–29.
The Editor
Quentin D. Wheeler is Virginia M. Ullman professor of natural history and the
environment, director of the International Institute for Species Exploration and vice
president and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Arizona State
University in Tempe. He conducts research on beetles (Insecta: Coleoptera) and has
long had an interest in the theory and practice of taxonomy and the role of taxonomy
in the exploration and study of biological diversity. As founding director of the Inter-
national Institute for Species Exploration, he is overseeing a convergence of descrip-
tive taxonomy, phylogenetics, and computer science and engineering to overcome
impediments to rapid progress in all phases of species exploration.
Wheeler joined the faculty of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, follow-
ing completion of his doctoral degree at The Ohio State University. He was a pro-
fessor at Cornell in both entomology and plant biology and served as chair of the
department of entomology as well as director of the Liberty Hyde Bailey Hortorium.
Subsequently, Wheeler served the U.S. National Science Foundation as a program
officer and as a division director for 3 years. Wheeler was the first foreign appointed
keeper of entomology at London’s Natural History Museum. He has authored nearly
100 scientific publications and was coeditor of Fungus–Insect Relationships: Per-
spectives in Ecology and Evolution (with M. Blackwell, Columbia University Press,
1984), Extinction and Phylogeny (with M.J. Novacek, Columbia University Press,
1992) and Species Concepts and Phylogenetic Theory: A Debate (with R. Meier,
Columbia University Press, 2000).
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