What has Happened to Descriptive Systematics? What Would Make it Thrive?

Abstract

I agree wholeheartedly with Wilson's statement. The fascinating field of phylogenetic reconstruction has become the principal topic of discussion in our journals, meetings, and often in classes. But as we reconstruct phylogenies, the very tips of the phylogenetic branches are disappearing. The quality of our lives and certainly that of our descendants depends on ameliorating the destructive forces of population growth and the advance of civilization. The present mass extinction, caused by human activities, is not so dramatic as that at the end of the Cretaceous, and we should be aiming to make it less severe as well. As systematists it is our job to describe and map the world's living creatures, activities that are the cornerstones of conservation. Floras, faunas, and monographs, what I call descriptive systematics, accomplish this. So why is the important work of classifying the world's organisms and making that information available progressing so slowly? In recent years there has been a general narrowing of the types of systematic research (Lammers 1999) and a neglect of traditional systematics (Kruckeberg 1997). In this paper I attempt to explain why this is happening and propose possible solutions. I believe there are five contributing factors. First, descriptive systematics is time-consuming work. Writing monographs and floras is a slow process. One first must become familiar with the group being studied (just as one needs to learn the basics of a language before saying anything coherent in it), and if it is a large group that takes a long time. The largest groups are avoided, and only become larger and more complex as some systematist (preferably a well-informed one) increases their size by describing more taxa. Because productivity of descriptive systematists largely depends on experience, it is no surprise that they are often most productive in the later years of their lives. But are our recently lost monographers and compilers of floras (e.g., Arthur Cronquist, Al Gentry, Reed Rollins, Lyman Smith, John Wurdack, Rupert Barneby, Duane Isely) being replaced by younger workers? I think not. And in these days, society needs to do more than replace them. This kind of scientist is more necessary than ever before and their numbers ideally would be increasing. There will never be a time better than the present to conduct an inventory of the world biota. Second, the current measures of value do not favor descriptive plant systematists. Scientists, and the administrators (e.g., university deans and presidents) who judge them, tend to view scientists much like many animals view each other when choosing a mate. We tend to focus on particular qualities rather than on the whole scientist. In animals, what is truly important is how many reproducing descendants each has. With scientists, it should be the contribution in knowledge and ideas one makes to new generations of scientists and the world at large. But with some animals it becomes the size of horns or the gaudiness of plumage that counts; by analogy, with scientists it becomes the number of publications and the amount of money raised to do one's science. Many valuable taxonomic papers are long, often several hundred pages long, and take years to produce. Furthermore, aside from salary, they can be done relatively inexpensively. The current popular measures of professional value (numbers of publications, money raised) do not favor descriptive systematists. I can imagine measures of value that would favor descriptive systematists. One might be the longev-