I think if nothing else i just want taxonomists to recognize there is a significant cost to rampant splitting at the species level, and that we current have nowhere near the resources to do the things they always tell us we ‘should’ do. Your goal is to improve our knowledge of the planet’s biodiversity but the effective result of this stuff is to decrease our knowledge, so we need a different approach.
It’s hard to follow your argument when you throw hyperbole like this around. There are challenging groups for sure, but we’re hardly to the point where species lack all meaning and taxonomists are no longer working on the same material as ecologists.
Good for you. But that doesn’t mean taxonomy and systematics should be re-oriented to serve the needs of another field. We have our own objectives with respect to understanding and documenting evolution and biodiversity.
I was a field botanist before I became a taxonomist, and identifying sedges and willows was part of the job. It’s not always easy, and it’s not always possible. But the solution isn’t to dumb down taxonomy. The solution is to recognize the limitations and work with them. Surveys in August don’t include the spring flora. Surveys in May don’t include asters. Some taxa only get identified to genus or complex in the field, and if a particular study needs finer resolution appropriate resources and expertise need to be secured. Or you just accept that for this survey we don’t know which Rubus, or which Festuca, was present.
Maybe you work in a much more hostile situation than I do, but I’m not yelling at anyone who doesn’t identify everything to the finest resolution theoretically possible. If I can, I offer assistance with tricky identifications, or advise field workers on when the extra effort is likely to be worthwhile, and when it’s not going to materially impact their results.
But your argument here seems to be that taxonomists have completely lost the plot, or are just out to get you. The ones I work with certainly aren’t, and if this is your experience I don’t think it’s representative of the field as a whole.
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well, what if it isn’t hyperbole in my mind, what if you just aren’t seeing the same thing as I am? Clearly the taxonomist side doesn’t see the problem at all, or else they wouldn’t be doing what they are doing. I don’t think taxonomists are malicious villains at all. But… We ARE nearing the point where taxonomist are no longer working on the same material as ecologists, and if you can’t see that, it just speaks to a bigger problem.
I don’t know why this keeps coming up, along with people’s seeming insistence that splitters are somehow smarter or more diligent workers than lumpers. It’s weird ad hominem and adds nothing to the pro-splitting argument at all. No one is proposing dumbing down anything. It doesn’t make you smarter, or make someone a better ecologist, to recognize 56 cryptic species within what is now Pinus strobus. Please try to discuss this without implying this sort of thing, it really isn’t helpful. The discussion is how to define and use the species concept, not who is ‘dumb’. (which is also super ablist terminology but that’s a whole other issue)
Well this is part of what i am saying too. No matter how much people offer this stuff, there is never actually a designated taxonomist for each taxa to identify these new cryptic species.
No, not at all. I think they are uncovering some really interesting findings, but the decision to split them all off at the species level is harmful and the wrong path.
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Citation needed. Seriously, to claim that the scientific discipline dedicated to documenting and describing biodiversity no longer does that, but instead is inventing meaningless constructs that only confound ecologists is an extraordinary claim that requires evidence.
I think it’s weird that you interpret my statement as a personal attack against lumpers. I’m not arguing that all splits are good, or that it’s a personal failing to object to them. I’m addressing your general point that it’s more important that our taxonomic systems be convenient to use, at the expense of not correctly describing what we know about nature, i.e.:
Again with the hyperbole. Are there 16 cryptic species of Carex flava? Are there 56 cryptic species of Pinus strobus?
It sounds like you’re very upset about some extreme cases, but from my perspective most of the species I learned in the 90s are still species now. The ones that have been split mostly make sense to me. And there are a few groups that don’t make any sense, and clearly need some combination of splitting, lumping or redefinition. In those cases, having some new names to use will not be a harmful thing; with careful research it will put us on the right path.
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I’m going to close the thread, it’s becoming a two person conversation and the original question has been addressed.
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