[Zoobank-list] Code fear

[Robert Mesibov]

Rich Pyle asked earlier: "What is stopping people from inappropriately 
describing species names right now?" We can also ask, "What is stopping 
people from describing species right now?"

I'm currently encouraging a young biologist to do taxonomy on a 
long-neglected group in which this colleague is non-taxonomically 
interested. This means not only advising on terminology and the Code, but 
also reassuring that correct taxonomic procedure can be followed by ordinary 
humans.

Reassurance is necessary because the colleague sees taxonomy as the province 
of trained specialists with legalistic minds and fluency in Greek and Latin. 
The colleague can't get training in taxonomy, because it isn't taught 
anymore. As Judith Winston says in her 1999 book "Describing Species", 
taxonomy is "considered old-fashioned and unworthy of a place in the modern 
science curriculum." Winston says she wrote her book "at the request of some 
ecologist colleagues who were finding undescribed species in the course of 
their research and wanted to know what steps they should take to get those 
species named (it is a little embarrassing to have to publish 6 years of 
data on the ecology of 'species X')".

IMHO the least of our worries is that pseudo-taxonomists might multiply 
under the proposed new regime. The much scarier thought is that real 
taxonomists will continue to decline in numbers, and that taxonomy as 
procedure will continue to be seen by young biologists as arcane but 
necessary nonsense babbled about by white-haired elders of the biologist 
tribe.

I personally believe the proposed changes to procedure will make those 
biologists less fearful of taxonomy. ZooBank will be a tremendously useful 
tool. It would be wonderful if the Code could be summarised, as suggested in 
this discussion, for taxonomic beginners, and the summary put on the ICZN 
website. That website would also be a suitable place for a primer on correct 
formation of Latin and Latinised names, plus a digital resource similar to 
Roland Brown's classic "Composition of Scientific Words", plus links to all 
the specialist databases and resources.

It would be unfortunate if ZooBank was created and reforms carried out just 
for the existing taxonomic community. Can we build new procedures and 
resources so that "non-taxonomists" can _appropriately_ describe species 
with confidence?
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Dr Robert Mesibov
Honorary Research Associate, Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery
and School of Zoology, University of Tasmania
Home contact: PO Box 101, Penguin, Tasmania, Australia 7316
(03) 6437 1195

Tasmanian Multipedes
http://www.qvmag.tas.gov.au/zoology/multipedes/mulintro.html
Spatial data basics for Tasmania
http://www.geog.utas.edu.au/censis/locations/index.html
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