Comments on: How Many Deep-Sea Nematodes Are There & Why We Many Never Know

By: Oikoman

Oikoman — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 06:41:09 +0000

Taxonomy has always been on shaky ground, largely because its the aspect of the biological sciences that is more art than science… very few taxonomic papers would pass muster with scientists trained today, as they tend to be based on arbitrary and personal opinions on whether the differences between populations are sufficient to constitute new species (lumpers vs. splitters). Never mind how many species of nematodes there are, we can’t even say for sure how many species of field mice there are in North America, due to the wildly different opinions on whether or not two populations are sufficently differentiated to apply the species tag. With the ‘popular’ species it gets even worse… there are thousands of described cone snail species, but its estimated only about 600 are valid… all because different people went and described different extremes of the populations and separate species. In the less popular species you still have problems, as the species designations can all be down to one persons opinions, and there are no other experts to serve as a check on run-away imagination… in my own (former) career, I have encountered taxonomists who have built their careers on species designations (and publishing reams off biogeographic and evolutionary papers from these relationships) who have had everything overturned because someone else actually applied some statistics or genetics to show that their taxonomic trees were mere fantasy. DNA barcoding can help a bit with this situation, but on a highly variable and subdivided population it won’t tell you where the species boundaries actually are, but will increase the expense enormously.

Given these problems, is there any surprise that funding bodies shy away from funding taxonomy? When it was just a lone museum scientist surrounded by dusty cabinets and bottles of formaldehyde, it wasn’t that big an expense, and most funding came from patrons (victorian times) or core museum and university budgets. Now that access to a DNA lab is becoming the gold standard, questions are being raised about exactly how scientific much of taxonomy is, and the amount of money required to do the job properly has skyrocketed.

By: Oil queen

Oil queen — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 00:52:15 +0000

sorry, i posted oil in wrong site.

By: David Marjanović

David Marjanović — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 01:28:36 +0000

DNA barcoding does have one problem, and it’s a big one: it imposes one single species concept – and a phenetic one at that – on everyone.

To get that kind of very rough grip on nematode diversity, I’d prefer sequencing environmental DNA and running it through a phylogenetic analysis…

By: Al Dove

Al Dove — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 19:31:49 +0000

oops, I botched my HTML tags. MODS! sorry…

By: Al Dove

Al Dove — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 19:24:14 +0000

I've never understood why taxonomy doesn't get more funds. Look at the PR value COML have got recently for new species descriptions. AND, its one of the few fields where you are essentially guaranteed to get results. Its not like a multi-billion dollar particle collider that sits idle for 90% of the time. For a billion dollars, you could revolutionise taxonomy the world over! I've written about species accumulation curves before as a tool in predicting biodiversity. It seems to me that combining that approach with DNA barcoding we could at least make a huge dent in numerical diversity question without doing all the morphology. It would be straightforward and relatively easy, don't you think? Not nearly as fund as new species descriptions, but maybe more realistic given the size of the task.

By: Jason R

Jason R — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 14:41:27 +0000

“Nematodes are known from virtually every habitat in the seas, fresh water and on land. Some are generalists, but many have very specific habitats. One species is known only from felt coasters under beer mugs in a few towns in eastern Europe.”

Brusca, Richard C., and Gary J. Brusca. Invertebrates. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, 1990. Print.

By: David Marjanović

David Marjanović — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 10:37:54 +0000

The biological sciences have devalued taxonomy as field

Why not spell the magic word money out? I'd rather say university bureaucracies and government bureaucracies have defunded taxonomy as a field.

By: Quick Links | A Blog Around The Clock

Quick Links | A Blog Around The Clock — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 04:10:11 +0000

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