Taxacom: Single official lists of taxa (sensu Doug Yanega many proposals to this list)

Tue Jul 4 10:31:22 CDT 2023

George,
You repeatedly neglected or didn't understand or brushed off the argument that with a very basic knowledge of Latin grammar you do not have to memorize the endings of adjectival specific names, because you just know them when you see the genus. This is true in most cases. This is a HUGE time saver. Not sure why you don't get it or don't accept it.
And "Lepidopterists have never used it [gender agreement]" is wrong. The correct phrase is: Most lepidopterists have never used it.
All the best, No one (Frank)

Dr. Frank-Thorsten Krell

Senior Curator of Entomology, Editor-in-Chief
Commissioner and Councillor, International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature
Department of Zoology
Denver Museum of Nature & Science
2001 Colorado Blvd
Denver, Colorado 80205-5798, U.S.A.
Frank.krell at dmns.org
Phone 303.370.8244
Fax 303.331.6492
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-----Original Message-----
From: Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at lists.ku.edu> On Behalf Of George Beccaloni via Taxacom
Sent: Tuesday, July 4, 2023 9:15 AM
To: Jose Fernandez-Triana <cnc.braconidae at gmail.com>
Cc: taxacom at lists.ku.edu
Subject: Re: Taxacom: Single official lists of taxa (sensu Doug Yanega many proposals to this list)

What a monumental waste of time and effort that would be - at least for the purposes of gender agreement! No one has presented a good scientific argument in defence of gender agreement, so I hold by what I said earlier - it is a useless waste of time! Lepidopterists have never used it, and they are probably a lot happier for it. Just use the basionyms - that would result in a much less confusing and more stable system.

Best wishes,

George
****************************************************************************
*Dr George Beccaloni FLS*
*Director, Alfred Russel Wallace Correspondence Project*

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****************************************************************************

On Tue, 4 Jul 2023 at 15:54, Jose Fernandez-Triana via Taxacom < taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> [Sorry for the long email that follows]
>
>
>
> What a long exchange of ideas over the past couple of weeks or so! 
> Even though at times it may look repetitive or tiring, I think this 
> exchange has been mostly valuable, as it is indeed important to hear 
> other criteria and see other perspectives (we have seen comments 
> coming from different sectors and degrees of specialization). I think 
> these exchanges are one of the main useful things of Taxacom.
>
>
>
> One of the main components of this discussion has been the proposal of 
> having “master lists” of taxa. I copy below my signature the latest 
> email from Doug about that -but, to be fair, he has been proposing 
> that approach for a long time (at least 2019 as far as I can remember, 
> probably longer than that). And he has mentioned that several times in 
> this Taxacom list. I have to say that I fully agree with Doug’s 
> proposal, and have at times wondered why there is not more support for 
> that idea here. Instead, the discussion usually steers away towards 
> other topics and his proposal gets once and again “forgotten” among 
> the plethora of emails and discussions going into many tangents…
>
>
>
> I truly believe that such list (or lists) are indeed possible and 
> would probably be the best way to deal with the many problems that we 
> have been discussing here lately. What I think has been overlooked, or 
> at least not discussed with more detail is how to generate such lists. 
> Usually what I see here is the work from informatics or databasing 
> experts, trying to obtain and curate such information from many 
> sources, and I also see the efforts (wonderful! Do not get me wrong) 
> of isolated persons spending a considerable amount of their time 
> (mostly for free and out of love for what they do) gathering such data and preparing such lists on their own.
>
>
>
> But there has never been a concerted effort (at least that I am aware 
> of, but perhaps I am wrong!) to discuss how such list(s) could be 
> generated from bottom to top, so to speak, i.e., generated by the 
> community instead of done by the few brave “IT knights” that are 
> trying to do it now. Why do not we try to engage the wider taxonomic 
> community to work together on that? And “reward” them by way of 
> publications where such lists are initially presented, so that 
> everyone that participates “gains” something (instead of just appearing to be just contributing her/his info “for free”
> to some IT wizard that would generate the list, as it is usually the case)?
>
>
>
> There are no real limitations to such an approach, if there would be a 
> will to do it. For example, scientific societies devoted to specific 
> taxa could decide to support more and advance such efforts. [I am 
> going to use Hymenoptera here to use myself as a Guinea pig in the 
> following exercise (I am the current president of the Hym. Society)]. 
> So, let’s say that the International Society of Hymenopterists (ISH) 
> decides to publish lists of genera (and species, because a concerted 
> effort needs not to be limited only to genera gender agreement, it can 
> also be broadened to include many other things such as synonyms, 
> species lists, etc.). Like all of the hyper diverse insect orders, we 
> do not really know how many species are already described (let alone 
> how many undescribed… but that is another topic, so I digress there). 
> And we do not have lists of synonyms, gender of genera, and so on and 
> so forth for many Hymenoptera groups. But what if ISH members decide 
> to work together towards that goal? The work can be spread by 
> families, or any other, smaller grouping, such that work can be 
> manageable and papers can be produced as groups are completed. Such 
> publications can later be used by all of the databasers and IT 
> wizards, but the initial list gets credited to the taxonomists that worked preparing, checking and analyzing those lists. One only needs to identify potential “project leads”
> for specific taxa (be it family X or even a large genus Y) and have as 
> many people interested with that taxa getting involved in the work 
> needed to prepare such lists (authorship of the papers would be 
> determined by the individual contribution of each author). Taxa that 
> are “orphan” (i.e., have no current  experts to work on that, or the 
> current experts are not interested, would remain undone, until the 
> time comes when someone would be willing to work on that. But at least 
> a good amount of taxa could be done in the meantime. [One different 
> problem is groups where there are different experts with competing 
> views and, unfortunately, sometimes contradictory or strongly in 
> disagreement… But, from what I have seen, that tends to be more common 
> in vertebrates than in larger groups such as invertebrates (although 
> no group is exempt from human disagreements and miseries, of course! 
> In any case, I will not touch in this email about how to solve those 
> potentially “difficult groups” to deal with when there are competing 
> or opposed experts (this could be discussed in a different email, if there is any interest in doing that)].
>
>
>
> A few years ago I worked on a project like that, with a single 
> subfamily of Braconidae (around 3,000 described species). The work 
> involved a) one undergrad student, b) one technician, c) one 
> Ichneumonidae researcher, d) two Braconidae researchers, with the main 
> expertise on that taxon. At the end everyone got “rewarded” (perhaps 
> the better phrase would be “her/his work towards that list was 
> properly recognized”) and the paper, published in 2020 and over 1,000 
> pages long, has become the standard for names and other things related 
> to that subfamily (including the first time the gender for all genera 
> of that group where clearly and explicitly stated, and over
> 300 new combinations were provided, etc.; see the link here:
> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fzookeys.pensoft.net%2Farticle%2F39128%2F&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Cd8ff8f7c13a647d70b2908db7ca3bc98%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638240814905150611%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=BcFSUJ03jJycThuGA0nSeS4O36bKfRJ6ooZb%2FwC4Kbk%3D&reserved=0). [For what is worth, Doug 
> helped me A LOT to correct many of the gender problems we encountered 
> during that work, that is why I know he has been pushing for these 
> efforts for a long time].
>
>
>
> There is no limitation to continue doing that for other Hymenoptera 
> taxa that are still pending or any other group. And, needless to say, 
> many other lists have been generated, both before and after my 
> example, and many of them are better than mine! Thus, I do not pretend 
> to have invented the wheel here, I only point to an example of 
> collaborative work done bottom to top and being able to deliver a list 
> that was then usable for the wider community - as it has been discussed here for the past few weeks.
>
>
>
> Perhaps we could think about this approach, because then things would 
> be more manageable and both the taxonomic and wider scientific 
> community would accomplish more. We could indeed have our cake and eat 
> it, as long as we could agree on some minimum standards and 
> organization of the work to be done…
>
>
>
> And I will stop here, thanks to anyone that was patient enough to read 
> up to this point!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jose
>
>
> --
> José L. Fernández-Triana, Ph.D.
> Research Scientist, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Canadian National 
> Collection of Insects (CNC)
> 960 Carling Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0C6, CANADA
> Phone: 613-759-1034. Email: jose.fernandez at agr.gc.ca Alternative 
> email: cnc.braconidae at gmail.com 
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