Can Citizen Scientists Help Slow the Decline of Taxonomy?
Forrest M. Mims III
Over past centuries, some of the best minds in the natural sciences devoted their lives to classifying plant and animals species. This specialty is known as taxonomy, which is defined by Merriam-Webster Online, as the "classification of plants and animals according to their presumed natural relationships."
Citizen scientists around the world have played a major role in surveying plants and animals and recording their findings. Over the past few centuries, amateurs have even discovered many new species. For example, the 4 July 2008 installment of The Citizen Scientist reported that retired carpenter and amateur botanist David Gowen discovered two new species of plants never before described by science.
Figure 1. Dragonflies like this low-flying amber-wing
(Perithemis tenera)
can be easily photographed by amateur naturalists. Forrest M. Mims III.
Even though there is high interest in finding and classifying previously undescribed species around the world, the number of professional scientists engaged in taxonomy is in sharp decline. Bob Grant recently described the sad state of taxonomy in an essay in The Scientist that is must reading for amateur naturalists. Brant's essay was entitled, "A Fading Field: Traditional taxonomists are an endangered species. Could their unique brand of knowledge disappear, too?"
Amateur naturalists who watch birds and survey other animals and plants are invited to express their views about Grant's essay in the "Backscatter" department of The Citizen Scientist and the Society for Amateur Scientists Community Forum. You might also consider posting a response on The Scientist site, where I posted the following comment about the significance of taxonomy and eye-witness observations:
The Twilight of Taxonomy
Bob Grant’s piece on the fading of taxonomy (http://www.the-scientist.com/2009/06/1/32/1/) deserves a wide audience while there is still time to salvage what is left of systematics. The National Science Foundation should especially acknowledge this serious problem.
We have entered an era when some molecular biologists seem more interes=
ted in extracting DNA from museum specimens than in adding to the collections. A classic example is the destruction of very rare specimens preserved in amber to attempt DNA extraction (Mims, 1993).
For 7 years I have studied variants of the baldcypress found along Texas Hill Country streams and rivers. Let us go so far as to assume that all baldcypress are the same species: Taxodium distichum, including T. mucronatum, the national tree of Mexico. This leaves the problem of assigning scientific names to the variants of the species, including those I study that have a very different morphology than the common baldcypress. Even the annual growth rings and distribution of tannin in the rings is obviously different. While the old generation of botanists I have consulted is intrigued by these findings, the young generation has a very different view based solely on DNA.
Satellite remote sensing technology can lead to issues analogous to the twilight of taxonomy. For example, a decade ago colorful sunsets accompanied by extended twilights were observed from South Texas. These twilight glows looked much like those that followed the volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo and suggested a new aerosol layer in the stratosphere. After I posted these observations on the Internet, two experienced twilight observers were among the respondents who reported seeing the same phenomenon. I then sent an inquiry to a team charged with measuring optical depth from a remote sensing satellite. Their response was that the twilights were probably caused by smoke from Mexican power plants, an impossibility due to the stratospheric altitude suggested by the lengthy duration of the twilights. I suggested to the team that they simply go outdoors to watch the twilights with their own eyes, but persistent sulfate smog over their location blocked their view.
In the end, the high-tech satellite completely missed the phenomenon. Observations by much older lidars in Cuba and California confirmed the new aerosol layer that was first discovered simply by measuring the duration of twilight glows using unaided eyes and a watch (Mims, et al., 1996).
Forrest M. Mims III
References:
F. M. Mims III, Save the Amber, Nature 362, 389 (1993).
Ibid., et al., Lidar data from Cuba, Germany, and Hawaii; aerosol layer with unknown source, Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network (Atmospheric Effects), http://www.volcano.si.edu/reports/bulletin/contents.cfm?issue=atmospheric, (February 1996).
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The Citizen Scientist (03 July 2009).
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