Pragmatism and Rigour can Coexist in Taxonomy

Abstract

Two recent essays in this journal, de Carvalho et al. (2007; 2008), have questioned our writings on the role of webbased taxonomy in modern biodiversity science. We reply briefly here and argue that the commentaries misunderstand and misinterpret what we have written, something for which we must clearly take part of the blame. de Carvalho et al. (2007) suggest that we believe that the problems in modern taxonomy are ‘‘mostly due to the lack of an adequate cyberstructure to disseminate its much needed products’’; that professional taxonomists have ‘‘grown accustomed to being labelled not only as mere ‘service providers’ for the biological sciences, but ones that are becoming irrelevant due to obsolescence’’. Our writing and that of others ‘‘reveals a traditional misunderstanding that regularly emanates from the more ‘applied’ side of biology’’, an ‘‘‘end-user’ attitude’’, unaware that taxa ‘‘are not mere end-products—they are hypotheses of relationships’’, we are ‘‘not familiar with the complexity of [taxonomy’s] hypotheses and identity as a real, successful and independent science’’. de Carvalho et al. (2008) talk about a ‘‘‘taxonomic witch hunt’’’; a ‘‘concerted directive to discredit ‘traditional’ or ‘established’ systematics’’’, and ‘‘trivialising taxonomy’’. We have explored the possibility of ‘unitary taxonomies’; single web sites that would contain the taxonomy of a substantial group of plants or animals. The idea is to create a ‘first web revision’ that would include all the taxon hypotheses concerning the group, including alternative hypotheses. Within the site further taxonomic hypotheses would be advanced, discussed and tested. The site would be run by taxonomists and its working methods would essentially be identical to that of current taxonomy but adapted for the web. It would also look outward, providing a consensus taxonomy for end-users unwilling to navigate the complexities of the alternative hypotheses that are the grist of modern taxonomy. The consensus would evolve and change as the evidence base grows. The site would be constructed to allow all biologists to contribute information about different taxa, but this ‘‘wiki’’ element would be separate from the refereed, moderated core. The site would link to specimen, molecular and biodiversity resources, and incorporate modern digital information management to the full (machine readability, unique digital identifiers, etc.). Our aim here is not to defend this specific proposal and indeed have stated ‘‘we do not claim that the model of Web-based, unitary taxonomy that we have described above is the only way to proceed’’ (Godfray et al. 2007). But we do vigorously rebut the notion that such ideas are an attack on the Linnaean tradition. Let us address some specific criticisms.