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

Tue Jul 4 16:50:03 CDT 2023

 Well, one thing seems clear and that is that enough taxonomists (and other species like ecologists who also publish stuff with scientific names in it) disagree with gender agreement to make it virtually certain that a significant proportion of them will continue to ignore it, come what may. The Code, of course, cannot be enforced "by the nomenclatural police!" So, there will continue to be variation, due to gender disagreement, in the literature. This will be a subset of variation due to other reasons, such as different combinations and also just accidental misspellings. So, if we are to track information on a taxon (a species, say), then we have to track all these variants anyway. You can call one of the gender variants the correct spelling if you like, but it doesn't really make much difference in practical terms. Authors can still use Aum bus, either without comment, or with the comment that it may not be the correct spelling by the minor nomenclatural technicality of a requirement for gender agreement. As I said in a previous post, we perhaps need to move away from the idea of a single correct name for every taxon. Don't misunderstand, any name still needs to apply unambigously to a single taxon. That is important. Any given taxon, however, can have a set of equally correct unambiguous names to choose from. So, for example, Aum bum, Aum bus, Aum ba and Cus bus, etc., can all be variant names for the same species.
Stephen
    On Wednesday, 5 July 2023 at 08:24:34 am NZST, Jose Fernandez-Triana via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:  

 Dear Tony,

Thanks a lot for your comments about my message. Indeed what I was trying
to bring to the attention of the group was not necessarily the gender
agreement topic (which has been discussed extensively) but rather the angle
of creating master checklists for different taxa. This would not only
render the gender agreement topic irrelevant (as Doug has already mentioned
in his latest emails) but also, and most importantly, it would provide
other benefits that go beyond dealing with gender agreements, such as
having a single list with all names (synonyms, homonyms, etc.), accounting
for all species of a taxon, species distribution, etc. In that sense it
would not be "a monumental waste of time and effort" as George considered
it would be in his reply to my email.

But indeed what I wrote about has been done before and Tony points out many
good examples of that (and certainly more could be mentioned). I emphasized
doing so from a bottom to top approach instead of the (I think most common)
top to bottom way, as perhaps that would be more practical.

Tony wrote: "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". And I totally agree with his assessment.
Again, perhaps because I am too naive (or perhaps I am too prone to embark
into monumental waste of time and effort enterprises? ;-)  I was
considering the possibility of mobilizing the wider community to work
together in their respective taxon groups and produce those lists. The only
"novelty" I could claim from my previous email is to make those lists as
published paper (or papers) first, so that the authors implied in those
efforts get the recognition they deserve (and are also encouraged to work
towards those goals). And the idea of encouraging scientific societies to
somehow organize the work to be done... instead of relying on the admirable
enthusiasm and hard work of a few fellows.

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

On Tue, Jul 4, 2023 at 3:41 PM Tony Rees via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu>
wrote:

> 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%7C8fcdfec408e54d2f9b6b08db7cd8a3e7%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638241042311868262%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=K8jCBz0GoXd9jod%2FIjZAya1mJWfvPmXY8BUIYBwPnqM%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%7C8fcdfec408e54d2f9b6b08db7cd8a3e7%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638241042311868262%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=WT9q4%2FUNuYzrqYFksNIRP4BOFVBtmBkrACCR6tIz3C4%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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