Possible Projects

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . for a Possible Future

8 November 2011

The Dream:
In the early 1980s, I imagined that one day the climate would again stabilise. [I had first accepted, and published on, climate change in 1975.] I assumed that ecologists would eventually be looking at broken ecosystems and would want to replace missing species - ideally with the original species, and otherwise with similar species performing the missing ecosystem services. Having effectively instant access to basic taxonomic information would be important in pioneering the necessary technologies. With SKIS I went further and it provides a basic protocol for collecting and transferring ecological field data indexed to species names in classsified checklists.

For this task, I assumed that initial monitoring would ideally be at the finest possible geographic and taxonomic scales - all possible species in all possible tiny locations would be recorded time and again. Similarly, I imagined that the full taxonomic spectrum would need to be catered for uniformly. So I investigated taxonomic and ecological data capture for this situation. But my interest in this apparently big-science scenario is in the details of how best to assist the human interface, that is, the micro-management of grass-roots data capture. So I set out to help anyone, anywere record the perfect sample.

The dream is to have records that add up (eventually) to an understanding of community and ecosystem structure in stable or slowly-evolving biodiversity regimes (many 20th century communities would have been ideal for base-line records). Then, far into the future, ecologists willl be able to assess the ecological fitness of ecosystems against these records with the aim of returning depleted ecosystems to full vigour. I focus on the way almost all of Africa was when my grandfather saw it in 1900.

The Reality:
The reality is the range of impediments to collecting sufficient, timely and relevant data. Organising such data collections, even if my BioList System had been deployed, would not have been possible until about now for lack of a shared vision by all those involved in conservation. Today, global instabilities are uniting the world behind a need for sustainability; ultimately that means stable ecosystems. Similarly, computer devices and the operating systems to manage and transmit such data needed to evolve. On the other hand, the basic field data must be collected as soon as possible while some time-honoured (and, as yet, close to stable) ecosystems survive. "Now" is the only window of opportunity to make the most constructive use of the ideas offered here.

All of the necessary technology must be simple and easy to use, as with smartphones. Similarly, the software for dealing with the biological classification and the full range of taxonomic names would need to be simple and easy. That's the challange for amassing pragmatic, ecological database records. The answer I found is to record: checklists - of species that are living in close proximity - and where and when for each list. That's all. Analyses of the data can wait for decades, centuries or millennia - whatever is found appropriate.

But such records contain a surprisingly wide range of ecologically relevant information. Taxonomy: A species name, which is part of a unique international vocabulary, implies its classification, that is, a definition of its relationships to all other known species. Similarly, the scientific record, as indexed by the various taxonomic names associated with any species is replete with scientific information. Taxonomy also covers Common names which are an aid to memory that assists with field identifications in paraticular, and makes possible local and net-wide communications of species-related information. Location: GPS points lead easily to information on elevation, aspect, soil type, climate, etc; and date and time includes season, day length and solar elevation. And, from its checklist and related database entries, the system gives the names and information about associated species. Now, that's just about all.

Today's taxonomic database systems (Encyclopedia of Life, etc) are not suitable for species-level ecology - their basic design makes them fundamentally useless for translating taxonomy into ecology: of course, being computerised, they can be made to do "everything" - mysteriously, but they are complex introverted systems, whereas the need is for a simple, transparent, expansive system. Similarly, conservation scientists need to stop being problem-orientated narrow specialists and become answer-orientated. We need wide-eyed natural history to return as the paramount scientific disciplin for this century. But natural history needs broad scientific and community support.

Science and society have lost taxonomic and ecological competence and awareness over the past few decades. Recently, some of the sobering problems that allowed Taxonomy to become downtrodden throughout the academic world have been explained by Professor Ferdinando Boero ("The Study of Species in the Era of Biodiversity: A Tale of Stupidity", 2010, diversity-02-00115.pdf). He details how biotechnology 

With loss of taxonomic capability comes compromised communication of biodiversity information, thus ecology must have suffered. The most serious implication is that ecosystem-wide ecology has a taxonomic limitation as we face pervasive species extinctions due to habitat losses and climate change. Climate change must be modifying ecosystem compositions and functions, including services, usually negatively.

 Molecular taxonomy is an essential aspect of taxonomy, but it does not solve all problems. We need
to know both phenotypes and genotypes. The  so-called  central dogma of biology, postulating a one-
way  flow  of  information  from  genotype  to  phenotype,  suggested  a  logical  primacy  in  investigating
phenotypes, but epigenetics is showing that the so-called dogma is not a universal law 13. 
In the USA, the country that started these trends, some illuminated scientists convinced the National
Science  Foundation  that  the  dismissal  of  traditional  taxonomy  had  been  a  stupid  move  (stupidity
again).  The  country  was  almost  deprived  of  taxonomists  (the  few  remaining  ones  being  old  and
confined  to Museums) and young graduate  students were not willing  to pursue a career  in a  suicidal
discipline. To revive taxonomy, NSF launched the Partnership for Enhancing Expertise in Taxonomy.
The need of such initiative was due to the undeniable fact that traditional taxonomists had disappeared
from the USA scientific community, and that molecular taxonomy was not enough 7. The rest of the
world  is  behind  the USA  of  about  10  to  20  years,  so  the  process  of  taxonomy  dismissal  is  still  on
course  in many countries  that, unfortunately, are not  learning  from  the mistakes of  the USA and are
destroying their expertise in taxonomy, to follow a false modernity...

7. Services to Taxonomy: Information Is Not Knowledge
With  the advent of Information Technology, and after  the Rio Convention,  it be ..............Huge projects were  launched:  the Global Biodiversity Information Facility,  the European Network
of Biodiversity  Information, Lifewatch,  the Census of Marine Life,  the European Register of Marine
Species, Diversitas,  the Tree of Life,  the  list might go on so  to  fill one page  8. Almost every name
means millions of either euros or dollars. 
The  logic behind all  these projects  is  that  information  is  there and  it has  to be made available. A
very useful deed indeed, but what about knowledge? We know the names of two million species, and
the estimate is that they are ten to fifteen millions. So, it is right to have the information about the two
millions we know  already, but we  should dedicate  some more  resources  to  the  rest  of  the  unknown
portion of diversity, the majority of it. 
Paradoxically, however, after  the  share dedicated  to molecular approaches and  to  information and
technology enterprises, very few resources remained to go in the field, collect organisms, bring them to
labs and study their phenotypes, to describe new species, produce revisions and compile monographs.
Only very  limited portions of biodiversity continue  to be explored  in a strategic way,  like  that of  the
Antarctic or of the deep sea, for reasons linked to commercial or political treaties and for the power of
some scientific lobbies. -------------Huge projects were  launched:  the Global Biodiversity Information Facility,  the European Network
of Biodiversity  Information, Lifewatch,  the Census of Marine Life,  the European Register of Marine
Species, Diversitas,  the Tree of Life,  the  list might go on so  to  fill one page  8. Almost every name
means mill - - - - -- -        = = = = = =Decision makers,  following  the  directives  of  the Rio Convention,  decided  to  dedicate  enormous
resources to the study of biological diversity, but taxonomists received a ridiculous share of them. The
lion’s share went to molecular and computational scientists who pretended to have  the solution  to  the
problem of biodiversity exploration. They do have some solution, but theirs are not  the solutions. The
approach must be multidisciplinary,  and must  include  traditional  taxonomy.  In  a Catch 22  situation,
however, since traditional taxonomists are almost extinct, due to their low IF, there are not enough of
them in powerful advisory committees to foster a policy to enhance taxonomy!  = - = - = - = - = 

  The barcode concept  is very helpful for  identification and  is  leading  to  the discovery of many
sibling species, but taxonomy is not identification. And we will always need taxonomists to name the
new species,  to clear  the synonimies, etc. The barcoding of  life  is a  strong help  to  identification but,
without  integration  with  traditional  taxonomy,  it  will  be  probably  a  poor  tool  15,16.  Of  course,
however, this technologically advanced “solution” to the problem of species identification is attracting
lots  of  funding.  It  is much more  “scientific”  to  identify  specimens with machines  than  doing  it  by
simply looking at them!

Students know not to bother with taxonomy, except possibly here in Dunedin which is New Zealand's biodiversity hotspot for ecotourists and for ecological studies. In these ways, New Zealand is favoured by an intense recent history of

(with a hopeful glimmer left in Otago, but otherwise especially so in New Zealand's Natural History Museums),

Along with routine objective monitoring, it will be desirable to manage invasive and other destructive species wherever they are found, such as alien vines that top forest giants and kill them by excluding light. Species woulld be eliminated if found to be damaging the local ecology; that is, monitoring would lead to appropriate management. If alien, where found, species would be assessed on their ecological fitness as found. Care would be taken to preserve species in stable relationships with any particular community lest they go extinct elsewhere. In such ways, all biodiversity has to be managed from now until ecological stability returns - many millennia hence. Otherwise the sixth mass extinction event will not be turned around by science, and only science can offer hope of this being done in the life-time of Homo sapiens.

In the meantime, ecological management in most places will depend on an increase in local interest in biodiversity, and crucial to this will be the use of taxonomy using both Latin names in laptop computers and smartphones as well as Common names in shoulder-top computers. The interested public, more so than ever, will need much help to become useful in doing scientific conservation. As a lead-in, they will need to acquire identification skills, allied to an interest in local natural history. Fot this to happen, keys to local segments of local biodiversity will need to be made available by local natural history enthuasiasts, probably with museum and university help. Such work should be given priority right now. To this end, I can recommend a set of keys I prepared for use in schools in Ireland; these were expanded into a book (Woods, C S 1974a)(see References) which I will soon describe in some detail in a following article.

With lots of well-managed biodiversity data, many options would become obvious for helping some biological communities stay functional even now - for example, by assisting species and communities to migrate in parallel with climate changes. This might be either by conservationalists making physical translocations or by devising and maintaining suitable biodiversity corridors. Following some high-profile examples, the theory needs to develop assisted by advances in large-scale data capture and slick data management. Up to now our civilisation has depended on self-regulated biodiversity; from now on all ecosystems will need to be rigourously managed to serve the needs of all biodiversity. Should I add, and us?

A Possible Future:
As climate stabilises, as it eventually will (but will the temperature be higher or lower?), there will be many broken ecosystems everywhere, as in heavily populated regions now. For those communities that have useful monitoring records, replacement species will be able to be recommended to help them return to maximum functionality and providing ecosystem services. Seed banks may be tapped into at this juncture. More typically, replacement species will need to be sourced from far and wide - but knowledge of them will already have been captured.

The above process offers to speed up the recovery of ecosystems in ways that would otherwise need to rely on evolution of new species and chance wanderings. Taken seriously, this process would give as much attention to humble plants, fungi, soil organisms and all other creatures as conservation authorities are able to give to today's most high-profile species - the application of the Tiger-in-your-garden idea. Parataxonomists will deal easily with such local biodiversity, however, their main role could be to translate conservation science into what the general public need to know so as to be fully cooperative. Active help will be needed from a lot of people - 0.1% would be good, with a tenth of these relaying species information to science centers. [Notes to be included below.]

The Present:
Hopefully, as the human world is radically transformed due to underlying environmental stresses (seen today as a monetary/financial crisis), the scientific, computer and business worlds, in particular, will find it appropriate to help taxonomy to initiate necessary support for biodiversity. The question is: will use of taxonomy be able to usefully influence the changes wrought by the impending crisis in trade, resources, etc? Yes, most certainly. Re-invigourated taxonomy, in support of good outgoing ecology, will make a world of difference in the coming decades and millennia between life with, and without, such knowledge, so long as it is grounded in abundant background field data.

The taxonomic part of any biodiversity monitoring system will need to be suitable for parataxonomists of all ages. To this end, and knowing of no other such system, I am upgrading my fully-functional version of BioLists that now resides on my DOS-based laptop. At long last, the economic woes that worry some people leave me hopeful of attracting the necessary support to put BioLists online.

Cedric  Woods
Dunedin, New Zealand

Comments welcome: to drcedric@gmail.com