Beyond Cladistics: The Branching of a Paradigm

5. Floras to Phylogenies: Why Descriptive Taxonomy Matters

77 FI VE Sa n d ra Knapp and J. Rober t Press FLORAS TO PHYLOGENIES Why Descriptive Taxonomy Matters The centrality of taxonomy (or systematics; we will here use these two terms as synonymous) to the study of diversity is often taken for granted, but the decline in the discipline decline has been highlighted through various reports (House of Lords 1992, 2002, 2008) and funding initiatives (such as the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Partnerships for Enhancing Expertise in Taxonomy [PEET]—see Rodman and Cody 2003; and the Planetary Biodiversity Inventory Program [PBI]—see Wheeler 2004, Page 2008; the UK’s BBSRC Co-Syst program—see http://www.linnean. org/co-syst). The field of taxonomy appears to be entering a time of unprecedented change and perhaps renovation (Godfray and Knapp 2004), but what needs change, how that change can be affected, and just what sort of taxonomy we might need for the future are still under discussion (e.g., European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy [EDIT] 2007). If the field of taxonomy can be characterized as interlocking spheres of endeavor, we can divide it in many different ways—a report charting the science assembled by the community in the mid-1990s (see Anonymous 1991) suggested that the tasks of “systematics” could be seen as three central “missions”: (1) “survey, discover, inventory and describe global species diversity accurately, efficiently, and rapidly; (2) analyze Beyond Cladistics: The Branching of a Paradigm, edited by David M. Williams and Sandra Knapp.Copyright byTheRegentsoftheUniversityofCalifornia.Allrightsofreproduction in any form reserved. 78 / ON CHRI S and synthesize the information derived from this global discovery effort into a predictive classification system that reflects the history of life; and (3) organize the information derived from this global program in an efficiently retrievable form that best meets the needs of science and society (Systematics Agenda 2000). Put more simply, Systematics Agenda 2000 laid out a set of priorities where species were catalogued, the tree of life was constructed, and the resulting information was made accessible in many ways. Taxonomy has also been characterized as description, phylogeny , and identification (Knapp 2008a). Description is central to most visions of what the science of taxonomy should be, but the importance and prominence of descriptive taxonomy as an enterprise has been in sharp decline, particularly relative to the advances made in phylogenetics with the adoption of molecular techniques (Wheeler 2004, 2008). Moreover, most current summaries of what taxonomy needs to best enter into the twenty-first century are largely limited to synopsis or inventory—the naming and listing of species of organisms. Logically extended, this definition of descriptive taxonomy suggests that the role of description is to give names to the terminals in a cladogram or tree, and principally to allow communication about the entities we designate as worth naming in nature. In this conception, description is the same as naming and listing. This view owes much to the erroneous characterization of the discipline as “essentialist” and “typological” (Winsor 2006); which has contributed to the narrowing of our appreciation of what taxonomy can contribute to the rest of biology. Much discussion and effort have recently been put into the provision of names lists (see Godfray 2002; EDIT 2007; papers in Wheeler 2008) for use in assessment and monitoring. Global databases such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF, www.gbif.org), Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS, www.itis.gov), and Catalogue of Life (www. catalogueoflife.org) all provide names lists with minimal descriptive information. Names lists, especially rigorously synonymized ones, are of course essential for counting exercises and for establishing the scale of the numerical diversity of life on Earth. Less discussion has centered on the importance of the provision of comparable descriptive information about species and its future utility for organismal science, although some taxon based databases are working toward this goal (see Creating a Taxonomic E-Science [CATE], www.cate-project.org; Solanaceae Source, www.solanaceaesource.org). The recently established Encyclopedia of Life (www.eol.org) where names lists will be reinforced by the addition of a wide variety of content is a step toward the provision of F LORAS T O PHYLOGENI ES / 79 more descriptive information online, but much of the discussion as to what constitutes “descriptive taxonomy” still centers on the provision, on paper or electronically, of names and lists. We would contend that description is more than naming; descriptive taxonomy needs to be seen...