Time to update taxonomy? Article from BioMedNet [Snip w/link]

[John Noyes]

Ken,

Agreed. Though, t might be a bit paradoxical to choose a large poorly known
insect genus. By its nature a poorly known genus is poorly known, amongst
other things, because it is relatively hard to collect and it might require
a gargantuan effort to obtain a big enough sample to use all three
approaches and make it worthwhile. For instance the genus Aprostocetus (in
Hymenoptera) will certainly include more than 10,000 species (fewer than
1000 described). It would take a real effort over several years to collect
even 20% of the species. It would be an ideal genus on which to do this
sort of work because identification of the species using traditional
taxonomy is really almost impossible. Again a bit of a paradox here because
comparing the "DNA first" approach using traditional morphological methods
would obviously be very difficult.

John

At 01:35 PM 1/31/2003 +0000, Ken Kinman wrote:
>Dear All,
>      I just want to add my voice to the chorus opposed to making this
>DNA/Barcode proposal "mandatory".  But let's face it,  on a list like
>Taxacom, this is a bit like preaching to the choir.
>      I think a middle ground approach to this proposal (which would be
>agreeable to most everyone) would be one or more "test cases" to see how
>well this would work in practice.  We could choose a few taxa (families or
>large genera) that are poorly known anyway, and compare the results from:
>DNA alone, traditional approaches alone, and thirdly a combined approach.
>The third approach is bound to be the best, but it would be very instructive
>to see how well DNA alone would do.  And in the process, some poorly known
>taxa would get some much needed attention.
>     The point is that we should try this out on a small scale.  Maybe a
>mollusc family, a large insect genus or family of mites, and some worm and
>plant taxa as well.  Perhaps we will find that a "DNA first" approach will
>work well for some groups and not for others.  It would be a very
>interesting scientific experiment and we would no doubt learn a great deal
>(in more ways than one).
>         ----- My two cents,
>                    Ken Kinman
>
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