NAMING SPECIES, A NEW PARADIGM FOR CRISIS MANAGEMENT IN TAXONOMY: RAPID JOURNAL VALIDATION OF SCIENTIFIC NAMES ENHANCED WITH MORE COMPLETE DESCRIPTIONS ON THE INTERNET  Authors: Erwin T.L., Johnson P.J.
Year: 2000
Public: The Coleopterists Bulletin, 54(3):269–278. 2000.
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The process of taxonomic description and validation of names under the International
Code of Zoological Nomenclature (Fourth Edition) is central to providing the anchor by
which present and future seekers of knowledge attach and subsequently retrieve information
about species and their phylogenetic associations. Since Linnaeus (1758), 4,400
6 363 species of insects have been described per year. If 25 to 30% of all species are
beetles, and some 400,000 are estimated to be described to date, even taking the lower
end of reasonable estimates at 8 to 10 million species of insects total, we still have more
than 2 million beetle species yet to describe. At the current pace of some 3,154 beetle
species described per year (1978 to present: BIOSIS, Zoological Record), we could
‘‘finish’’ the job in the year 3056 using the present system. While traditional descriptions
published in widely circulated journals has been the mainstay of taxonomy and served
the science well, we are entering a phase that might be called crisis management in
taxonomy. This results from recent higher demands on taxonomists due to a general
recognition that biodiversity is disappearing at an alarming rate, the so-called Sixth
Extinction Crisis, and a reduced number of practicing descriptive taxonomists. Therefore,
a new description paradigm that provides for rapid validation of new taxonomic names
is paramount to plans for national biodiversity surveys. This new paradigm is elaborated
and examples are given for both traditional and projected methods of species descriptions
and rapid publication with additional extensive use of the Internet and server system to
store and transmit more complete details and images.
‘‘One other characteristic of modern taxonomy seems to me to be that emphasis
has shifted from descriptions to actual specimens, or from words to animals.
Descriptions cannot be made full enough and accurate enough to satisfy later
workers. Each generation of taxonomists must see the actual specimens used
by earlier generations, and I think the tendency now is, or should be, to make
descriptions short, but of course explicit and carefully calculated, and to make
specimens widely available.’’
P. J. Darlington, Jr., 1971 |
