We should all aspire to be so woefully ignorant! DNA barcoding does not compare to traditional taxonomy as a science, but it is a useful (if extremely limited) tool allowing non-experts to identify (already known) species. It can only be taken as a serious alternative to credible taxonomy if the goalposts are changed: when we set out to merely identify species, not know useful, interesting and inspiring things about them. Your comments brilliantly illustrate the importance of emergent properties of complexity and why a reductionist approach, like sequencing DNA, will never suffice for understanding species or the novel, complex and unexpected attributes that make their study so fascinating.
Sometimes the woefully ignorant can say what the otherwise erudite dare not. I therefore say: DNA barcoding is dependent on assumptions galore, including what genes to use, what short segments of them to use, what statistics to use to arbitrarily assign statistical significance, etc. So how can it be expected to adequately circumscribe or describe species or the interrelationships thereof (assuming one’s goal is to increase the likelihood of approximating reality). I don’t get it. DNA barcoding for systematics ignores the fact that DNA is only one part of a program of highly complex regulatory and developmental networks with complex feedback loops that are more fully and succinctly represented by the resultant morphological characters that morphological taxonomists use, ironically. DNA barcodes for systematics is like chord progressions for classifying songs to genre—which would group La Bamba, You Are My Sunshine, and Wild Thing, based on their 1-4-5 chord progression. To use minuscule fractions of genomes to assign species distinctions undercuts the mission of science, which is to increase and deepen knowledge and information, not limit knowledge to shallow, illogical, technology-based, assumption-laden and information-poor shortcuts.
We should all aspire to be so woefully ignorant! DNA barcoding does not compare to traditional taxonomy as a science, but it is a useful (if extremely limited) tool allowing non-experts to identify (already known) species. It can only be taken as a serious alternative to credible taxonomy if the goalposts are changed: when we set out to merely identify species, not know useful, interesting and inspiring things about them. Your comments brilliantly illustrate the importance of emergent properties of complexity and why a reductionist approach, like sequencing DNA, will never suffice for understanding species or the novel, complex and unexpected attributes that make their study so fascinating.
Sometimes the woefully ignorant can say what the otherwise erudite dare not. I therefore say: DNA barcoding is dependent on assumptions galore, including what genes to use, what short segments of them to use, what statistics to use to arbitrarily assign statistical significance, etc. So how can it be expected to adequately circumscribe or describe species or the interrelationships thereof (assuming one’s goal is to increase the likelihood of approximating reality). I don’t get it. DNA barcoding for systematics ignores the fact that DNA is only one part of a program of highly complex regulatory and developmental networks with complex feedback loops that are more fully and succinctly represented by the resultant morphological characters that morphological taxonomists use, ironically. DNA barcodes for systematics is like chord progressions for classifying songs to genre—which would group La Bamba, You Are My Sunshine, and Wild Thing, based on their 1-4-5 chord progression. To use minuscule fractions of genomes to assign species distinctions undercuts the mission of science, which is to increase and deepen knowledge and information, not limit knowledge to shallow, illogical, technology-based, assumption-laden and information-poor shortcuts.