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

[Tony Rees]

I accidently sent this a few minutes ago to José only, but it was intended
for the wider list, hence the re-send...

Regards - Tony

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Tony Rees <tonyrees49 at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2023 at 05:02
Subject: Re: Taxacom: Single official lists of taxa (sensu Doug Yanega many
proposals to this list)
To: Jose Fernandez-Triana <cnc.braconidae at gmail.com>


A propos of José's email reproduced below, I would point out that the type
of "bottom up" list preparation has been going on under a number guises
already, although (with exception of the "Official" LAN format) without any
official status for nomenclatural purposes. I refer, to my knowledge, first
to regional surveys (my particular exposure to these being in the marine
realm in the first instance) such as:

- the European Register of Marine Species or ERMS - a coordinated activity
that was "farmed out" to relevant experts, then resulted in a paper
publication

- its electronic/web based successor, the World Register of Marine Species,
again a (semi) coordinated activity to which several hundred experts now
contribute, sometimes with sub-Registers for "branding" purposes such as
The World Foraminifera Database and others

- individual (or small group) ongoing databasing and/or publishing efforts
such as Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes, the world Diptera catalog "Systema
Dipterorum", similar for Fungi, Algae, and other groups; many then collated
in / feeding through to the "Catalogue of Life"

- contributions to scholarly journals, a particular, self-identifying
series being that entitled "All genera of the world" in the journal
Megataxa, initiated by Zhi-Qiang Zhang from New Zealand

- contributions (probably much less coordinated) by numerous individuals to
the online "The Paleobiology Database" for fossil taxa.

>From my point of view (as a top-down viewer in this instance) the main
drawback of these numerous and certainly most valuable and praiseworthy
activities is the lack of a facility to determine what is missing /
generate any idea of completeness, i.e. a "master template" in order that
areas that are outdated, or missing altogether, can be identified and
hopefully, filled. The coordination of activities in that respect would
appear to me to be the area that would benefit most from additional work
that is not presently being undertaken.

For that one would need as a starting point at least a master list of
families of the kind that was produced some decades ago now (again by
co-opting relevant experts in every field) resulting in the 1982
publication of the Sybil Parker edited 2-volume compendium "Synopsis and
Classification of Living Organisms", and the 1993 Mike Benton-edited "The
Fossil Record 2", both landmarks in the field. More recently, Mike Ruggiero
did prepare a 2014 listing "Families of Living Organisms (FALO)" which is
indeed useful, but probably requires an update already.

Operations like the Encyclopedia of Life, Catalogue of Life, GBIF, etc.
already produces "integrated classifications" (=backbone taxonomies or
hierarchies) of this sort but are of course secondary users of such
information as is produced in the first instance by relevant taxonomic
specialists.

Regards - Tony

Tony Rees, New South Wales, Australia
https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fabout.me%2FTonyRees&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Cbcafc2984a8e4a71527408db7cc696aa%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638240964612397576%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=P71CkkrS73ZJ3XmCnnZZj0Kkkcdfp7hpQT68LpzZNkk%3D&reserved=0


On Wed, 5 Jul 2023 at 00:54, Jose Fernandez-Triana via Taxacom <
taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:

>
> 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%7Cbcafc2984a8e4a71527408db7cc696aa%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638240964612397576%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=OM%2BZhOvz89b98US3hLG1xV3XGEqzSiJGSLgkgOkazNI%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
>