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

[Jared Bernard]

I would say learning a few basic rules should mean you don't need to
memorize anything... but I actually don't understand why you would ever
need to memorize a list of species' genders.

In this debate, those against gender rules have used the argument "Just
because this is easy for some doesn't mean it's easy for me, and therefore
it should change for everyone [insert comment about the waste of time the
rule takes]," while those who have no complaint with nomenclatural rules
say "Just because this is difficult for some doesn't mean it's difficult
for everyone, and therefore it shouldn't change [insert comment about the
waste of time this debate takes]." And the arguments simply go round and
round with no-one changing minds.

Taxonomy has a long and fascinating history. I find it a shame that it's
seldom taught in universities these days, so that people studying ecology,
evolution, conservation biology, etc., don't seem to understand what a
species is, as the basic unit of biodiversity. I've contemplated hosting
seminars on this topic, but I don't know how to convince biologists that
it's something they ought to know, as they often act like it's something
they already know even when they don't, or that they don't need to know it.
So in the end, the field -- and especially the public -- devalues natural
history collections. For instance, journals demand that authors provide
accession numbers to genetic material or coding scripts, but not for
voucher specimens. And biologists scarcely appreciate the great resource
that is a natural history collection for all manner of projects, and
biology thus becomes disconnected from its foundation. To me, these are the
real dilemmas facing the field of taxonomy, rather than nomenclature rules.

But I find digging through the old archives in libraries and Biodiversity
Heritage Library to be invaluable when I'm investigating a specimen's
taxonomy. If we decide not to use the established nomenclatural rules, I
worry that it'll form a slippery slope toward the next generations of
taxonomists (assuming there are any) not being able to comprehend the
classic literature, which could lead to people redescribing known species.

So, we need to be advocates of our field and its history. We should also
remember the reason why Latin was chosen as the language of nomenclature,
clearly representative of the time of Linnaeus, but also as a common ground
for researchers the world over. We could have chosen Sanskrit or Syriac or
whatever, as long as the name is the same worldwide. This is a long-winded
way of saying we should maintain our field's standards. And choose our
battles wiser!