Taxonomy - What's in a name?

 

"It's not a hyperbole for us to say that all of biology is footnote to Aristotle. He defined the field, outlined the major problems, and accumulated data to provide answers - he set the course."

J.A. Moore, 1993: p. 33
(Science as a way of knowing: the foundations of modern biology. Harvard University Press)

 

Taxonomy is the scientific discipline that identifies, describes and classifies the diversity of life. It is well-known that this science has - at least in western societies - its founding roots in the thinking of the Greek philosopher and naturalist Aristotle (384-322 BC). 

The discipline has through the centuries evolved into a mature and stimulating science that not only allows storage and retrieval of information, but also hypothesis-driven reasoning on biodiversity issues such as neo-extinctions, conservation, alien invasive species and biosafety (see also the BioNET-International website 'Why taxonomy matters').

Taxonomy can roughly be divided in three complementary specialities.

• Alpha-taxonomy is concerned with identifying and describing the basic units of Earth's diversity (the species) and in grouping these into preliminary classifications (genera).

• Beta-taxonomy on the other hand is not primarily interested in the discrimination of discrete taxonomic variation, but attempts to construct hierarchical classifications that incorporate evolutionary relationships.

• Gamma-taxonomy seeks to understand the processes that drive taxon formation and evolution in general.

Clearly, these three branches are intimately inter-connected as understanding how biodiversity naturally arises, evolves and disappears is needed to recognise inter-and intra-specific variation, identify and name its units and build meaningful (i.e. reflecting common descent) classifications for them.

Enigmatically however, taxonomy - as the mother of all biological sciences - has during the last century lost quite a bit of the cutting edge splendour it previously lodged (especially in the eight-and nineteenth century when protagonists such as Linnaeus, Cuvier, Lamarck, Darwin, Wallace and Haeckel were active).

The cause of this calamitous state is not easy to trace, but can (at least partially) be attributed to a fund-and brain drain to other more experimental, less-comparative, disciplines (e.g. cytology, genetics, biochemistry, physiology and ecology) in the first half of the twentieth century. 

However, with the current realisation that large scale-habitat destruction and overexploitation of natural resources result in unprecedented rates of species-extinctions and co-occurring alterations in functioning and redundancy of ecosystems, the need for sound taxonomic research is acknowledged by virtually all conservationists. Yet, in the 21st century the so-called taxonomic impediment, i.e. the lack of taxonomic (inclusive of genetic) information, taxonomic and curatorial expertise and infrastructure in many parts of the world, has become the Damocles Sword above the heads of conservationists and policy makers. This taxonomic impediment roughly plays at two levels:

• practising taxonomists and curators in developed countries, where historically the bulk of taxonomic collections, infrastructure and know-how have accumulated, currently suffer to a lesser or greater extent from a lack of prestige and funds.

• practising taxonomists and curators in developing countries, where more often than not the bulk of biodiversity is located, are crippled by a lack of human, infrastructural and financial resources.

 

 

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