The Study of Species in the Era of Biodiversity: A Tale of Stupidity

By F. Boero. 2010

147 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Research policies ensuing from the Convention on Biological Diversity made huge funds available to study biodiversity. These were mostly dedicated to projects aimed at providing services to taxonomy via information and technology, or to develop "modern", i.e., molecular, approaches to taxonomy. Traditional taxonomy was overly neglected and is in serious distress all over the world. It is argued that both novel and traditional ways to study biodiversity are essential and that the demise of traditional taxonomy (based on phenotypes) in the era of biodiversity is the result of an unwise policy, mainly fostered by portions of the scientific community that aim at taking total advantage of the funds dedicated to the study of biodiversity.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, History and Philosophy of Science, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/62d89d196094037ff80c0284c0ebf803eca104f5

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Citations in the corpus

A Census of Marine Biodiversity Knowledge, Resources, and Future Challenges (2010, background): “Another symptom of this trend may be that the increased attention to novel methods available in molecular sciences is resulting in a loss of expertise and know-how in the traditional descriptive taxonomy of species [3].”
The seven impediments in invertebrate conservation and how to overcome them (2011, background): “Traditional taxonomy is on the verge of extinction, facing ever scarcer resources, and mostly regarded as ‘‘counting for the sake of counting’’, with ‘‘modern’’ sciences occupying taxonomy’s former space (Boero, 2001, 2010; Leather and Quicke, 2009; Wheeler, 2007).”
Phytosociology today: Methodological and conceptual evolution (2011, background): “All these events occur despite the evident needs of society, which have been highlighted internationally at world summits and celebrated in proclamations calling for biodiversity protection at all levels of biological integration (Boero 2010).”
How many species in the Southern Ocean? Towards a dynamic inventory of the Antarctic marine species (2011, background): “It is a well-known paradox that there is a general lack of support for (classical) taxonomy and that around the world taxonomic expertise in many groups is vanishing (e.g., Guerra-Garcia et al., 2008; Linse, 2008; Boero, 2010).”
Invited Review - Fight on Plankton! or, Phytoplankton Shape and Size as Adaptive Tools to Get Ahead in the Struggle for Life (2011, background): “Moreover, traditional taxonomy (based on phenotypes), although neglected in the last years and often totally substituted by more “modern” molecular approaches (Boero, 2010) has a fundamental value.”
DNA Barcodes for Marine Biodiversity: Moving Fast Forward? (2010, background): “Without a larger interest and involvement of highly trained taxonomists in marine barcoding studies, the advancement of the understanding of marine speciation will not be very rapid, potentially leading to another ‘tale of stupidity’ [100].”
A review of Italian research on free-living marine nematodes and the future perspectives on their use as Ecological Indicators (EcoInds) (2015, background): “…morphology (Abebe et al ., 2011) and an estimation of the richness or diversity, even if it is a rapid estimation, does not give information on the life cycles nor does it define ecological niches of the species, or give indications of their role within an assemblage or ecosystem (Boero, 2010).”
Worldwide Analysis of Sedimentary DNA Reveals Major Gaps in Taxonomic Knowledge of Deep-Sea Benthos (2016, methodology): “DNA barcoding and morphology-based taxonomy have sometimes been perceived as antagonistic approaches (e.g., Ebach and Holdrege, 2005; Trewick, 2008; Boero, 2010).”