Taxonomy at a crossroads: Communicating value, building capability, and seizing opportunities for the future

Abstract

I believe the top three questions facing taxonomy today all relate to the health and future of the discipline itself. 1. How do we ensure taxonomy is valued? 2. How do we build and maintain taxonomic capability? 3. How do we ensure taxonomy benefits from emerging opportunities?

Sizing the Knowledge Gap in Taxonomy: The Last Dozen Years of Aphidiinae Research

“…Although there is no meaningful research in biology without reliable taxonomy [60], its importance in the modern world is far from fully acknowledged [141]. Recently, the Swiss Re Institute report concluded that 55% of global gross domestic product (GDP) is dependent on biodiversity and ecosystem services [142], but we are still lacking large research grants (and even small ones) for taxonomy, which is considered only as a cost [141].…”

“…Although there is no meaningful research in biology without reliable taxonomy [60], its importance in the modern world is far from fully acknowledged [141]. Recently, the Swiss Re Institute report concluded that 55% of global gross domestic product (GDP) is dependent on biodiversity and ecosystem services [142], but we are still lacking large research grants (and even small ones) for taxonomy, which is considered only as a cost [141]. Until institutions, governments, and the world realize the importance of this kind of research, taxonomists need to be cleverer, and utilize data from all available resources such as museum collections, as well as cybertaxonomy [143], and molecular data.…”

Segmented worms (Phylum Annelida): a celebration of twenty years of progress through Zootaxa and call for action on the taxonomic work that remains

“…We suggest training a new generation of taxonomists that use an integrative approach (Daglio & Dawson 2019), combining morphological and molecular tools to investigate new species and more accurately define species boundaries. Although many have lamented the lack of funding and job prospects for taxonomists (e.g., Saunders 2020), training in the group has the potential to be widely applicable across a range of fields. Annelids are ecologically critical in food webs and are often dominant members of benthic marine and terrestrial communities (Philipps et al 2019), some are economically important (e.g., as fish bait and aquarium fish food: Read 2019), medically important (e.g., development of anticoagulants: Kvist et al 2020), and useful as model systems (e.g., regeneration studies: Kostyuchenko & Kozin 2020) and as bioindicator species (Capa & Hutchings 2021).…”

“…Of course, the problems of peer review in Zootaxa (and related journals) is emblematic of the main impediment in taxonomy as a whole: limited funds for the work. The expectation that taxonomists continue to provide their services for free (from peer review to acting as consultants on projects) is increasingly problematic considering the dearth of jobs and lack of funding (see reviews in Evenhuis 2007;Saunders 2020;Vinarski 2020;Wheeler 2020) despite many undescribed species waiting to be studied. We strongly urge for more support of editors and reviewers, especially for early career scientists who are essential for the growth of the field or even maintaining any expertise in certain taxa (Britz et al 2020).…”

Combining botanical collections and ecological data to better describe plant community diversity

“…Thus, cross-disciplinary partnerships across non-profit, governmental, and academic institutions are key. We suggest that ecologists reach out to their campus or regional herbaria, connect with curators and collections managers, and dedicate a line item in their research budgets for vouchered floristic (or faunistic) surveys of their study sites (see [ 74 ] for discussion of under-funding in collections-based research). We similarly suggest that curators and collections managers build relationships with ecology principal investigators and members of their labs, sharing their skills as integral assets to be included a priori into the proper design of biodiversity-focused ecological fieldwork (i.e., it is imperative to quash the “end-user mode” attitude that views botanists as simply providing identification services to those who use their keys and field guides [ 75 , 76 ]).…”