Species Identification, Character Illiteracy, and Romance Novels
I have never read a Karen Marie Moning book—assuming that I’m pronouncing her name correctly, it’s an amusing, and apt, homophone, given that she writes steamy romance novels—but stumbling across the following quote put taxonomy’s current situation in focus:
“Don’t believe anything is dead until you’ve burned it, poked around in its ashes, and then waited a day or two to see if anything rises from them.”
Wreckage after the April, 1986 fire in Los Angeles’ Central Library. Photo: Larry Bessel/Los Angeles Times (Caption linked to LA Times article about the fire, and source of image). This literary carnage is a metaphor for the combination of a mass extinction and DNA-based taxonomy. DNA barcodes, “minimalist” (almost entirely DNA-based) taxonomy, and similar approaches that ignore morphology, and other information-rich sources of evidence of the diversity of species, create the equivalent of a card catalog to our planet’s species, allowing us to identify them by name while failing to read their contents. The need for species identification is important and urgent, but it need not come at the price of never creating deep knowledge of species and characters. Everyone is best served when taxonomy is supported to create as much knowledge as possible, while facilitating species identifications as it always has.
Under assault for decades, its mission marginalized and misconstrued, its needs neglected, its reputation sullied, its positions eliminated, assailed by wave after wave of attacks on its identity, purpose and mission, of attempts to portray it as an anachronism, something to be replaced by a more modern approach, one based on technology and an arbitrary exaggeration of the information content of molecular data, its lofty agenda dumbed-down to merely identifying species.
Some believe that they have successfully killed traditional taxonomy, or at least have it down for the count—but they are wrong. Never underestimate the power of truth in science. The earth is not flat. Flies are not spontaneously generated from rotting meat. Regardless of the popularity such ideas once enjoyed, it was only a matter of time before such wrongheaded notions were rooted out. No matter how difficult, no matter how long it takes, no matter how circuitous the path, science eventually wins out. In the case of taxonomy, it will rise again, whether in the near future from what remains of its experts and infrastructure, or at a later date from its ashes. Knowledge of species, characters, and the history of life is simply too fascinating, too basic, and too important to be long ignored. Taxonomy is so necessary for understanding our selves and the world that its rise as a science was inevitable… just as necessity and curiosity will, sooner or later, lead to its resurrection. Identifying species is a matter of great practical value and urgency, given current rates of extinction and the erosion of ecosystems around the globe. But identifying species is a trivial exercise compared to the scientific exploration of species, characters and their history.
“Taxonomy is so necessary for understanding our selves and the world that its rise as a science was inevitable… just as necessity and curiosity will, sooner or later, lead to its resurrection.”
Carried to its logical extreme, a DNA-based taxonomy—exemplified by DNA barcodes and so-called “minimalist” taxonomy—is more like a card catalogue than a library. So, we should be asking ourselves: Of what value is it to quickly and accurately identify millions of books by their titles if we never read their contents?
Of what value is it to quickly and accurately identify millions of books by their titles if we never read their contents?
Both a card catalogue and DNA sequences are useful tools for finding our way around a library and the biosphere, respectively. But they can never realize their potential so long as we remain illiterate.
The cynical proposition that taxonomy exists as a service to identify species misses the point of species exploration almost entirely. It confuses the application of information with the growth of knowledge. The greatest challenge facing taxonomists is not to reestablish grant support for their revisions and monographs, not to reoccupy faculty and staff positions, not to address issues related to the inventory and classification of life on a rapidly changing planet, however real and great these challenges are. The greatest challenge for taxonomists is to clarify and reassert the core purpose of their science; to reembrace its prime directive which is to create knowledge of species, characters, and their history, not to make identifications.
This mission is timeless in its relevance to our intellectual lives, our understanding of ourselves and our world, as well as our physical well-being and prosperity. It is innate to the human psyche to seek meaning in our existence, and of the complex pattern of similarities and differences among earth’s millions of species. The taxonomic urge is as old as humankind itself. It is not merely an impulse to create names for the kinds of plants and animals we encounter, although our language facility compels us to do so. It is a deep-seated curiosity that cannot be denied; an irrepressible drive to explore, to discover, to compare and describe the attributes of species, and to understand the story of their history—on earth and, if we ever find life on another planet, there, too.
This means developing the necessary theories, concepts and methods to differentiate among species, to study, compare, and interpret characters, as well as giving names so that we may more easily think and speak of them; it means learning as much about species and clades as we can, and it means synthesizing, organizing and ordering all we know in a phylogenetic classification. It means, also, discovering our roots. Among the attributes that make us human, not one is, strictly speaking, truly novel. Those characters that are without precedent—inordinately large brains, upright gait, and opposable thumbs among them—are nonetheless modifications of characters that existed before; of characters, or parts of the genome, present in ancestral species. Exploring characters in their historical context leads us to understand the sequence of transformations explaining their existence. This is because, as Norman Platnick explained, anywhere along the evolutionary continuum, a character may be understood as an original attribute and all of its subsequent modifications.
The current trend toward a DNA-based taxonomy loses sight of the primary purpose of taxonomy which is to expand, deepen and enrich our intellectual lives and scientific understanding of the living world—and ourselves. Being able to identify species is a benefit of great value, indeed a necessity, but it is, nonetheless, only an application of taxonomic information and not the primary purpose of taxonomy as a science. Mathematics does not exist so that a clerk at the corner store can make correct change; geology does not exist so that we may recognize iron ore when we see it; and physics and math do not exist for the sole purpose of calculating the amount of fuel needed to fly an airliner from New York to London. These spheres of knowledge, as opposed to their applications, exist so that we may better understand the world in which we live. No one can deny the importance and impact of applied taxonomic information. But taxonomy is far more than a useful service. As a fundamental science, taxonomy is as essential to understanding the living world as physics, chemistry or astronomy are to understanding the physical universe.
“…taxonomy is as essential to understanding the living world as physics, chemistry or astronomy are to understanding the physical universe”
Molecular techniques, successful grant proposals, and the instant popularity that comes with them, are Sirens enticing us onto rocky shoals. We are being seduced by peer pressure to participate in the destruction of our own science. So, tie yourself to the mast and cover your ears! Listen instead to reason. Trust your instincts. Be curious, explore and understand. Indulge your fascination with the amazingly diversity, complexity and novelty of morphological forms. Be guided by centuries of advances in taxonomic theory and knowledge. Making sense of the similarities and differences among species is no less compelling or meaningful today than it was in Aristotle’s time; completing an inventory of species is, if anything, even more important today than it was in Linnaeus’ time; and the prospect of organizing knowledge of millions of species and characters in a predictive, phylogenetic classification is as enticing and intellectually satisfying now as it was to Hennig as he developed his Phylogenetic Systematics.
None of the benefits of pursuing taxonomy as a fundamental science have gone away. Only three things have changed. First, the biodiversity crisis has given taxonomy’s mission greater ugency: what we do not learn about millions of species in the decades immediately ahead may never be known—and we deserve to know far more than what can be learned from DNA sequences. Second, taxonomy must be single-minded and uncomprosing as it fulfills its unique mission while, at the same time, working to dispel misunderstandings and confront a deeply entrenched movement to undermine its independence and infrastructure. And third, academia has been adulterated by fads and funding, challenging us to return focus and priority to the growth of knowledge, not maximizing institutional income or courting the favor of biologists with very different, sometimes oppositional, goals.
It is imperative that taxonomists and natural history museums recommit to their traditional aims to complete an inventory, description, comparative analysis and phylogenetic classification of life on earth, paying as much attention to characters as species and clades. At the same time, knowledge created must be mobilized to enable species identifications and provide information critical to understanding evolutionary history, the biosphere, and the best conservation decisions.
An inordinate fascination with technology, unrealistic view of the information provided by DNA data, and ignoring taxonomy’s agenda are making matters worse, not better. Only taxonomy is charged with the exploration, documentation, analysis, description, and classification of life on our planet. This mission, and the very identity of taxonomy, have been badly scorched by recent events. Fortunately, time remains to stir the ashes—giving fresh oxygen to this fundamental science, and the core purpose of natural history museums— and see what rises. Centuries of progress are not so easily killed off. By clarifying taxonomy’s vision, by defending its mission, by reasserting its independence, by rejecting fads and resisting peer pressure, by meeting its basic needs, taxonomy can rise from the ashes to fulfill its destiny and meet the greatest scientific challenge—and opportunity—of our age.
Reference
Platnick, N. 1979. Philosophy and the transformation of cladistics. Systematic Zoology 28: 537-546.