DiSSCo Fever

CETAF initiative to expand museum access for collections-based researchers

Dust off your dancing shoes.  Find that Bee Gees 8-track tape.  DiSSCo is back!  The Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities, better known as CETAF, is working to create a world-class research infrastructure based on the incomparable natural history collections held by its member institutions.  The project is called the Distributed System of Scientific Collections and will be known by the acronym — wait for it — DiSSCo!  A guiding principle is that information associated with natural history collections should be FAIR, yet another acronym, standing for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable.

This is an exciting, highly commendable project; one that will benefit a vast array of communities, from ecology and agriculture to biomedicine and conservation. Such broad impacts should be trumpeted, of course, because they build a wider constituency of supporters for museum collections, increase public awareness of diverse impacts of collection-based research, and highlight the relevance of collections to contemporary science. Every taxonomist, curator, biologist, and citizen should applaud and celebrate this effort and wish the initiative the tremendous success that it deserves.

The material basis for CETAF is the definition of world-class.  Perhaps half of the preserved biological specimens in the world are curated by its 71 member institutions.  Collectively, they care for an estimated 1.5 billion specimens among which are represented more than 80% of the approximately 2 million named species of plants and animals in the world.  The amount of information contained in this assemblage is mind-boggling. Beyond taxonomic information is information relevant to morphology, ecology, geographic and temporal distributions, and climate change, to name only a few. Technological advances continue to squeeze more data from collections, such as DNA from historic specimens and openly accessible 3D images of rare plants and animals, and mobilize and use data in new and exciting ways.

CETAF institutions employ about 5000 scientists in 22 countries and much of what we understand of the diversity, distribution and history of life is based on specimens in their care.  By far, the greatest amount of information about our planet’s biodiversity resides in such collections, and the databases and publications based on them.

There is much praise that can and should be given to CETAF and its member institutions, and DiSSCo is just the most recent in a string of important CETAF initiatives from addressing needs of museums to picking up slack in taxonomic teaching created by universities.  I acknowledge that it is important — no, it’s more than that, it’s essential — to emphasize all the disciplines that can learn and benefit from natural history collections and to share with the world the potential benefits and impacts of continuing to expand, develop, and study museum collections. And to demonstrate, by example, that information technologies can link and create access to collections in new, powerful, and unprecedented ways. That said, if collections-based institutions are not strong advocates for taxonomy, delivering a clear, compelling and unapologetic message, who will be?

Catching up on their web pages, I was struck by the fact that recent recipients of their E-SCoRe Awards, given for excellence in collections-based research by scientists early in their careers, were not taxonomists and did not showcase excellence in revisionary and monographic studies — something that collections uniquely make possible and that test, expand and improve the information content of collections. Recipients had used collections to support important and potentially impactful research and were, without exception, bright young scientists unquestionably deserving of recognition.  That said, at a time when taxonomy courses are being expunged from university curricula; a time when positions and grants supporting taxonomists do actual taxonomy, such as revisions and monographs, are rare; and a time when serious taxonomy is being replaced by a molecular caricature of itself, in the form of DNA barcodes, it was regrettable that no recipients were honored primarily for doing taxonomy!  A taxonomic organization that does not seek out, encourage, recognize and reward young taxonomists is playing into the hands of the same trends and social forces that are diluting, diminishing, and decimating taxonomy as a rigorous, independent science and, in the process, eating away at the scientific foundation of biological collections.  Collections are valuable because of information attached to specimens, the most fundamental, and arguably important, of which is taxonomic.  Without revisionary work, the reliability and amount of such information decays over time. 

Perhaps this is a strategy and CETAF is seeking to advertise broader impacts of collections on research which is admirable — as far as it goes.  But to ignore taxonomy itself as it is increasingly marginalized and misunderstood in the scientific community seems to me an abdication of leadership from what is one of taxonomy’s most visible and respected voices.  Perhaps there could be two awards: one for excellence in collections-based taxonomy and another for innovative and impactful uses of collections for research in other fields, something exemplified well by the impressive and deserving young scientists recently selected for E-SCoRe awards.  It is without doubt a good idea to demonstrate the breadth of uses for collections in research.  But, at the same time, it is imperative to seize every opportunity to remind the world of the importance and necessity of collections-centered taxonomy in exploring, understanding and conserving biodiversity; telling the story of evolutionary history; maintaining information-rich collections; and creating a sustainable future.

As species go extinct by the thousands each year, taxonomy urgently needs visionary, determined, fearless advocates willing to defend it in the face of both deafening neglect and withering attacks from within, and far beyond, the boundaries of science.  If institutions employing taxonomists and caring for collections, taxonomy’s primary research resource, do not exert leadership to keep taxonomy front and center, prospects for completing an inventory of life on earth before millions of species have been lost are grim.  I have refrained from asking how many of CETAF’s 5000 scientists are taxon experts in the traditional sense; how many routinely publish revisions or monographs, describe species, and improve classifications. Or asking how many of its member institutions make taxonomy and the growth and development of collections a top priority, seamlessly integrating taxonomic research and curation.  I fear that I would not be entirely encouraged by the answers.

As DiSSCo is implemented, I hope that it will make the advocacy of taxonomy a pervasive, ever-visible feature and not allow people to form the opinion that collections are important only or principally for their applications to other, currently more popular, areas of science. This need not, and should not, detract from a message about the significance and impact of collections on many other fields.  But only for taxonomy are natural history collections the primary research resource and a primary product of their research.  The synoptic nature of collections, consisting of modest numbers of specimens representing species diversity and distribution, not intended to enable studies of the frequency of mutations in populations or abundance of species in habitats, is of limited value to experimental biologists. But it is the material basis for comparative and repeatable observations at the heart of taxonomy and constitutes humankind’s record and collective memory of biodiversity and the biosphere as they were found — and hopefully largely remain.   

With accelerated extinction rates, we have one fleeting chance to complete the inventory of earth’s species that Linnaeus began; one opportunity to make biodiversity documented, known and accessible at the granularity of species, clades and characters through detailed descriptions, comprehensive collections, and predictive phylogenetic classifications.  There may never be a comparably diverse planet on which to explore the diversity and evolutionary history of species and, as we enter the first mass extinction in 65 million years, there will definitely be no second chance to explore life on earth.  Nothing could be more urgent or important than a taxonomic renaissance to inform conservation decisions; create a permanent record of biodiversity, biosphere and evolutionary history; inspire a biomimetic revolution; and pursue the urgent goal of assuring that the world’s natural history museums, taken as a whole, reflect the diversity of earth species as fully as possible—before extinction has decimated biodiversity.  To succeed, museums and the taxonomic community need clarity of purpose, unflinching commitment, and courageous leadership.