Please log in

What's in a name: - Taxonomy in Crisis Forum

This is a forum addressing current issues in Taxonomy in the lead up to a cafe scientifique style event at the British Library on the evening of 17th March where Rod Page will introduce the subject. This event is now sold out. A few questions are posed below to get the discussion going, but please feel free to raise your own issues.
Crumbling foundations Taxonomy is an enabling discipline, underpinning a host of scientific research, including biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services, climate change and ecological modelling. Is the quality and full value of taxonomy effectively captured by assessment metrics and selection criteria for funding? Does the discipline lose out to more hypothesis driven science? How can we better convey the relevance of taxonomy to the wider scientific and policy agendas and society as a whole?
Unknown Unknowns… Around 2000 correction 20,000 additional species are described each year and around 1.8million species have been described since 1753. How many species remain undescribed? Is it important? How can we estimate the real extinction rates? What infrastructure is required to deal with high throughput sequencing and massive data outputs? Who is responsible for providing and funding the taxonomic infrastructure? Who will ensure it is coordinated, integrated and stable? What tools are required to share information and provide quality assurance? What is the best way to develop e-science and web 2.0 tools to meet needs?
Taxonomists: an endangered species? Skilled taxonomists are becoming very thin on the ground (and long in the tooth). There are inverse relationships between the location of experts and the location of new species and between the number of experts and the likely number of undescribed species in a genus. Can these imbalances be redressed? How can young scientists be attracted to taxonomy as a career? How can the expertise of amateurs be captured?
A new lease of life The amalgamation of phenotypic based classification with genotypic phylogenies means that some organisms are being re-classified. This requires a continued engagement between taxonomists, ecologists, informaticians, molecular and evolutionary biologists. How do we facilitate open access to data? Are attempts to develop an effective international system of unique identifiers working?

Join this forum

Filter by tags: taxonomy, systematics, lsid, change, molecular, eol, google, evolution, biodiversity, metrics, reclassification, classification, view all tags

Create a new topic
Search forums Advanced search
web feed Create a forum Send an invite

Advertisement