-----Original Message-----
From: Con Boekel [
Sent: Monday, 29 February 2016 12:49 PM
To:
Subject: Identification of animals and plants is an essential skill set — The Conversation
David
Interesting. But I am not sure it is a new phenomenum. When I did a second year biogeography course at Monash a quarter of a century ago (Kershaw, fantastic course!), and we were doing some cladistics, we went out and sampled plots of
plants as the raw material. Most of the students in that class could not ID the plants. At all.
Anyhoo, it is not just students, IMO.
Funds for taxonomy have declined as a proportion of total science funding for decades.
There is a dwindling band of mostly older taxonomists (many doing it for love, post employment) who have the huge skills base and encyclopaedic knowledge required for this sort of work.
There are some systemic reasons for this. One is the risk/reward structure of university funding. An example is using citations to measure 'productivity' when a taxonomist might spend a decade revising a major group, and then publish
a single book.
Typically this time period might involve five or six ministers, most of whom are gone before the research is finished, if they even realized it was happening at all. So kudos, cum political rewards, are few and far between.
There is the modern focus on genes rather than whole-of-species.
There is a major risk to our national collections now that CSIRO is going to focus on user pays and investment return.
After all, collections do not work like that.
Finally, taxonomy does not do the 15 second sound grab or the selfie.
Taxonomy does not do infotainment. Nor can it cope with ADD, the cult of the new, or the throw away economy.
While advances have been made in using robotic devices to record birds it is remarkable how little real progress has been made.
It turns out that someone who has been watching birds for several decades and takes one look at a bird whizzing past, assimilates the jizz, and declares species 'x', still has a useful suite of competencies.
regards
Con
On 29/02/2016 12:18 PM, David McDonald (personal) wrote:
> Hi. I found an article that you might like: "Identification of animals
> and plants is an essential skill set" —
>
https://theconversation.com/identification-of-animals-and-plants-is-an
> -essential-skill-set-55450
> David
>
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