Descriptive taxonomy: a golden or gold‐plated age?

Descriptive taxonomy, referred to here as “DT,” addresses how innovations in digital technology and molecular phylogenetics are changing not only how taxonomy is conducted but how taxonomic products (floras/ faunas, global revisions) are disseminated and communicated to a widening group of users. The authors emphasize that efforts to transform the 250yearold legacy of analog taxonomy have taken on new urgency in light of increasing rates of biodiversity loss and climate change impacts. If you want to know how descriptive taxonomists perceive their role in saving the world, read this book. As a taxonomist myself (I research ants), I share many of the dreams expressed in the book. I want to live in a world where you could know the name of any plant or animal, and could learn not just its name, but what it looks like, its habits, its distribution, whether it is endangered, whether it is invasive. Ideally, I would be able to do this without visiting a museum or library, and harness this knowledge to help protect habitats, monitor or restore ecosystems, and demonstrate how the wellbeing of humans is inextricably connected to that of the natural world. DT outlines initiatives by individuals and research teams that have pioneered new strategies to realize this vision. The 22 chapters are grouped into five parts: (1) current and potential users and relevance of descriptive biodiversity data; (2) outputs and impacts of descriptive taxonomic products in regional case studies; (3) field guides and application of floristic and faunistic works; (4) impact of new technologies on field collecting and management of collection data; and (5) impact of technologies in dissemination and integration, and DNA barcoding. One strength of the book is that it puts the way taxonomists work, especially in the production of floras (Part 1, 2), into a historical context seldom appreciated by those in other fields. To summarize, (a) efforts to date are incomplete, because much of life has yet to be described, (b) coverage has been nonrandom as we have studied far more large than small organisms, but (c) little effort has been devoted to considering the potential audience for taxonomic information. To put it another way, taxonomists have often worked alone, chosen taxa driven by their own interests, and been content with knowing that only a handful of taxonomists will ever use their work. Taxonomists have often failed to recognize that their discipline is an early step in a long chain of information that serves biologists, conservationists, and global change scientists, people who tend to have little contact with practicing taxonomists. Within this historical context, it is easier to understand why Flora Iranica (Rechinger, K. H., editor. 1963–ongoing. Flora Iranica. Akademische Drucku. Verlagsanstalt und Naturhistorisches Museum Wien, Graz/Wien), a monumental work of 72 fascicles on the plants of Persia, is a sadly inaccessible example of the entire genre. It’s written in Latin and German, languages not understood by most conservationists living and working in the region. DT calls for taxonomists to expand their audience beyond colleagues in the same field and to explore webbased tools. Most of science has already accepted that content must be digital to be valued. Readers of DT may find it distracting that some of the points raised by the authors are outdated; examples include Chapter 4’s concern over embracing the electronic delivery of biodiversity data and the adoption of modern tools like digital cameras to document plants. These comments represent both the heterogeneity of the field of taxonomy and the period in which these chapters were written. Unfortunately, the examples of progress outlined in DT demonstrate that we have far to travel on the path to achieving an online biodiversity knowledge infrastructure of all life. If past efforts in taxonomy were slow, nonrandom, and spread thinly across the diversity of life, the same can be said for the digital transformation of taxonomy. The wide variety of individual efforts and solutions happening spurs innovation, but the efforts involved are fragmented and prevent coalescence around reliable, longterm online solutions. Too many of the projects outlined in the book have links that are no longer viable. As in the world of software startups, the species informatics landscape is rich in acronym projects that turn over quickly, and it’s not clear which efforts will persist. But maybe Minter (Chapter 8) is correct in finding that an ecosystem of different sites offering similar but not identical services will be more robust and useful in the long run than a single site. For those who deal with sequence data, I still think you should count yourself lucky that Book Reviews