de Carvalho Marcelo R, Ebach Malte C, Williams David M, Nihei Silvio S, Trefaut Rodrigues Miguel, Grant Taran, Silveira Luís F, Zaher Hussam, Gill Anthony C, Schelly Robert C, Sparks John S, Bockmann Flávio A, Séret Bernard, Ho Hsuan-Ching, Grande Lance, Rieppel Olivier, Dubois Alain, Ohler Annemarie, Faivovich Julián, Assis Leandro C S, Wheeler Quentin D, Goldstein Paul Z, de Almeida Eduardo A B, Valdecasas Antonio G, Nelson Gareth
Departamento de Zoologia, Instituto de Biociências, Universidade de São Paulo, Rua do Matão, Trav. 14., no. 101, São Paulo, 05508-090, Brazil.
School of Biological, Earth and Evironmental Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia.
Cladistics. 2014 Jun;30(3):322-329. doi: 10.1111/cla.12045. Epub 2013 Jun 28.
Recent commentary by Costello and collaborators on the current state of the global taxonomic enterprise attempts to demonstrate that taxonomy is not in decline as feared by taxonomists, but rather is increasing by virtue of the rate at which new species are formally named. Having supported their views with data that clearly indicate as much, Costello et al. make recommendations to increase the rate of new species descriptions even more. However, their views appear to rely on the perception of species as static and numerically if not historically equivalent entities whose value lie in their roles as "metrics". As such, their one-dimensional portrayal of the discipline, as concerned solely with the creation of new species names, fails to take into account both the conceptual and epistemological foundations of systematics. We refute the end-user view that taxonomy is on the rise simply because more new species are being described compared with earlier decades, and that, by implication, taxonomic practice is a formality whose pace can be streamlined without considerable resources, intellectual or otherwise. Rather, we defend the opposite viewpoint that professional taxonomy is in decline relative to the immediacy of the extinction crisis, and that this decline threatens not just the empirical science of phylogenetic systematics, but also the foundations of comparative biology on which other fields rely. The allocation of space in top-ranked journals to propagate views such as those of Costello et al. lends superficial credence to the unsupportive mindset of many of those in charge of the institutional fate of taxonomy. We emphasize that taxonomy and the description of new species are dependent upon, and only make sense in light of, empirically based classifications that reflect evolutionary history; homology assessments are at the centre of these endeavours, such that the biological sciences cannot afford to have professional taxonomists sacrifice the comparative and historical depth of their hypotheses in order to accelerate new species descriptions.
科斯特洛及其合作者近期对全球分类学事业现状的评论试图表明，分类学并非如分类学家所担心的那样在衰落，而是由于新物种正式命名的速度而在增加。科斯特洛等人用明确表明这一点的数据支持了他们的观点，并提出建议以进一步提高新物种描述的速度。然而，他们的观点似乎依赖于将物种视为静态的、在数量上（即便不是在历史上）等同的实体，其价值在于它们作为“指标”的作用。因此，他们对该学科的一维描述，即仅关注新物种名称的创建，未能考虑系统学的概念和认识论基础。我们反驳终端用户的观点，即分类学在兴起仅仅是因为与 earlier decades 相比有更多新物种被描述，并且由此暗示分类学实践是一种形式，其节奏可以在无需大量资源（智力资源或其他资源）的情况下简化。相反，我们捍卫相反的观点，即相对于灭绝危机的紧迫性，专业分类学在衰落，而且这种衰落不仅威胁到系统发育系统学的实证科学，还威胁到其他领域所依赖的比较生物学基础。在顶级期刊上分配篇幅来传播诸如科斯特洛等人的观点，让许多负责分类学机构命运的人产生了表面上的可信度，这种可信度是缺乏依据的。我们强调，分类学和新物种的描述依赖于并仅在反映进化历史的基于实证的分类的背景下才有意义；同源性评估是这些努力的核心，因此生物科学不能让专业分类学家为了加速新物种描述而牺牲其假设的比较和历史深度。
