[Taxacom] Taxonomic haves/have nots

[Bob Mesibov]

Just back from the field, going through the DNA-only thread, found your message and its comment

"2) 'traditional taxonomists are happy to have molecules'... 'Happy to *have*' seems to imply that some molecular systematist will be kindly generating those data for a 'traditional' systematist to *have*. Good enough, but I have not heard criticism directed toward morphologists (or biochemists or paleontologists...) failing to include molecular (or ecophysiological or biogeographical, etc) data in their studies."

Your inference is correct, there are a lot of very capable, very experienced, traditional taxonomists waiting for a molecular systematist to generate data. I hope you're not surprised. Some of those expert taxonomists live in countries where molecular taxonomy is unaffordable. I know one such person, a young and very keen specialist in a SE Asian country, who still works with an ancient binocular microscope because his institute can't afford a new one. Other specialists live in richer countries but have no money to pay for the materials and analytical services needed to do DNA taxonomy. Still others in richer countries might be able to get the money to fund molecular systematics, but the local lab(s) is(are) fully booked with better-funded or higher-priority projects. Until Kim van der Lande's dream comes true and DNA taxonomy is dirt cheap and universally available, you'll just have to be patient with traditional taxonomists who are happy to have molecules.

Second point: both morphological and molecular taxonomists are often missing 'auxiliary' data in their studies. The reason is often the same in the two cases: the species is rare and they only have a specimen or two. For a very, very large number of arthropods, the material available to the morphotaxonomist is a single specimen in a museum, collected from some faraway location, with no prospects of getting out decent DNA. It would be very nice to be able to hop on a plane with a field assistant or two, travel to that locality and find lots more specimens, do a proper mapping of the species range, get ecological and life history data, parasite and predator info, etc etc plus enough tissue properly prepared to prime out the genes/fragments of choice. Because this is a wildly improbable fantasy, taxonomists tend to be very tolerant of published studies that contain nothing more than a short description and a few line drawings.

Regards,
Bob
-- 
Dr Robert Mesibov
Honorary Research Associate
Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, and
School of Zoology, University of Tasmania
Home contact: PO Box 101, Penguin, Tasmania, Australia 7316
03 64371195; 61 3 64371195
Webpage: http://www.qvmag.tas.gov.au/?articleID=570