House of Lords - Science and Technology

3.5. In our 2002 report, using CAB International[12] (CABI) as an example, we noted that it had "drastically reduced" the number of PhD grade taxonomists that it employed.[13] The fall in numbers has continued. The following statistics demonstrate the decline and ultimately the extinction of taxonomy in CABI:

TABLE 1

Taxonomists employed by CAB International 1992-2008[14]

	1992	2002	2008	2011 projected
Bacteriology	1	0	0	0
Entomology/arachnology	12	0	0	0
Mycology	15	7	3	0
Nematology/parasitology	6	1	1	0

Taxonomists in the UK: age profile

3.6. Added to this general picture of decline, there is a demographic issue. Survey data on ages of taxonomists are lacking for the UK as a whole but partial data and narrative evidence confirm that the population of professional taxonomists is ageing. At the National Museums Liverpool "all but one of the senior curatorial staff are in their fifties and most are close to retirement" (p 277). The deep-sea research group at the National Oceanographic Centre Southampton includes five taxonomic experts, three of whom are already retired and one is only a few years from retirement (p 46). At the Plymouth Marine Laboratory the skilled marine invertebrate taxonomists "are already in retirement, or close to it" (p 46). Dr John Waland Ismay, Chairman of the Dipterists Forum, observed that most fly experts are retired or near retirement and have no replacement in training (p 320). The National Museum of Wales has 16 trained taxonomists, the majority over 40 (p 282). A similar picture exists in the voluntary sector. For example two members of the Hertfordshire Natural History Society's recorders' group are in their 30s, the majority are over 50, a few are in their late 60s and a couple over 70, with "no sign of younger members coming through" (p 257).

3.7. While some organisations, such as the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science, are maintaining a spread of ages in their staff of taxonomists by careful succession planning (p 46), it appears that in general the average age of taxonomists in the UK is increasing. Across the range of different types of research organisation, taxonomic experts are retiring and are not being replaced.

Sectors in crisis

3.8. Mycology or fungal taxonomy, already highlighted as a problem area in our 2002 report, has continued to decline and the situation in the UK has become so grave as to be generally recognised as a crisis. The severity of this situation was referred to by a number of witnesses, including: the RBG Kew (p 14 ff), the RHS (p 296), CABI (p 224 ), UK BRAG (p 316), Plantlife International (p 289) and the European Mycological Association (p 243). Dr Richard Fortey, President of the Geological Society, said that "on the mycological side, the number of macro fungal taxonomists in this country has dwindled to the fingers of one hand or maybe less" (Q 234).

3.9. Dr Jim Munford, Programme Director of the National Biodiversity Network (NBN) Trust, observed that for some groups of freshwater organisms such as rotifers, and soil invertebrates such as collembolans, there was no taxonomic activity in UK (Q 215). The need to secure taxonomic expertise on marine organisms and foster capacity was highlighted on a European scale by the European Platform for Biodiversity Research Strategy;[15] and, overall, there is low taxonomic capacity in the UK in algae (British Phycological Society, pp 220-21), in a whole range of insect groups (Q 215), other soil arthropods, marine invertebrates and microbes, some families of flowering and non-flowering plants, as well as in fungi (National Museum Wales p 283; RBG Edinburgh pp 9-10). Freshwater taxonomic expertise has also been lost through the closure by NERC of the Freshwater Biological Association River Laboratory in Dorset.[16]

Classification of taxonomic activity

3.10. Taxonomic activity covers three key tasks: description, identification and phylogeny. "Identification" is described by the Linnean Society as "working out what an organism is", "description" is "working out the limits of species, genera and higher groups" and "phylogeny" is "working out how organisms are evolutionarily related" (p 90). They need to be considered separately because "each has a different dynamic and each is in a different state in terms of support and health" (p 90). Dr Knapp of the Linnean Society explained that "phylogenetics in part gets funded by research councils; descriptive taxonomy is funded by the great taxonomic institutions of the country and identification gets funded by the Darwin Initiative, a bit by Defra and the user community" (Q 160).

3.11. Description supports both identification and phylogeny by generating the names of the organisms and formally characterising them. These characteristics are used to provide the tools necessary for ecologists and conservationists to identify the organisms they work with. These tools range from traditional field guides and keys, to more technology based tools. Morphology and molecular-based phylogenetic studies (see Box 3 below) remain founded on descriptive taxonomy and the need for accurate identification and the deposition of type or voucher specimens in museums remains central to the discipline.

DESCRIPTIVE TAXONOMY

3.12. Descriptive taxonomy enables us to discern the units of biodiversity, so the delimitation of a species is essentially an hypothesis about the distribution of variation in nature. The basic task of describing and naming the organisms on Earth is far from complete and even in the UK new species are regularly found and described, especially marine and soil invertebrates, fungi and microbes. Building a comprehensive inventory of the national fauna and flora is fundamental—an essential tool underpinning policy on conservation and the sustainable use of biodiversity.

3.13. Descriptive taxonomy is described by the Linnean Society as "the most at risk sector" of systematic biology not only in terms of our ability to describe new species and document the biodiversity of ecosystems, but also in refining and even diagnosing the species we already know (p 90). In general, there is a declining population of professionals involved in descriptive taxonomy and even in major institutions, such as The NHM, a smaller proportion of resource is expended on descriptive taxonomy than at the time of the last inquiry. Dr Nic Lughadha, Head of Policy and Science Co-ordination at RBG Kew, commented that "people who nowadays call themselves taxonomists are spending a smaller proportion of their time doing descriptive taxonomy". She continued: "we are investing in the collections' maintenance at the expense of descriptive taxonomy. The balance is out of kilter and it needs further resources invested in the system in order to rebalance so that we can have an appropriate balance of collateral development and maintenance" (Q 7).

3.14. This change in UK contribution to descriptive taxonomy is reflected in various metrics. For example, the UK now ranks only tenth in its contribution to descriptive taxonomy measured using a sample of over 10,000 species of animals described since 2001 (see Table 2 below). (It should be noted that these data are presented here in raw form as an indication only. There are a number of factors which could be applied as a way of scaling them to make them more informative: for example, by size of population of each country, by the stage of development of the educational system, by historical factors or by number of indigenous species. We have not applied these or other factors on this occasion since the general indication provided by the raw data makes our point sufficiently well.)

TABLE 2

Relative national ranking of output in descriptive taxonomy based on numbers of new marine species and on numbers of new animal species described in the e-journal Zootaxa

Marine species: described 2002-2003^*	Zootaxa: described 2001-2007^**	Overall ranking: combined data
1 USA	1 USA	1 USA
2 Australia	2 Brazil	2 Brazil
3 Japan	3 PR China	3 Australia
4 Germany	4 Australia	4 PR China
5 France	5 Germany	5 Germany
6 Russia	6 Argentina	6 Japan
7 Spain	7 United Kingdom	7 France
8 United Kingdom	8 France	8 Russia
9 The Netherlands	9 Mexico	9 Spain
10 Brazil	10 Japan	10 United Kingdom

* Data from P Bouchet, The Magnitude of Marine Biodiversity (2002), in C Duarte (Editor), The Exploration of Marine Biodiversity, Scientific and Technological Challenges, Fundación BBVA, Bilbao.

** Data from www.mapress.com/zootaxa

3.15. Another metric is the percentage of UK-based authors publishing papers in systematic biology journals. The Linnean Society (p 91) noted a drop of five percentage points (from 17 per cent to 12 per cent) in the number of UK-based authors publishing in their three peer-reviewed journals over the period 2001 to 2007. Similarly, but over the 50-year period from 1958 to present, the British Lichen Society noted a decline from over 90 per cent to under 10 per cent of British-based articles in their journal The Lichenologist (p 210).

IDENTIFICATION

3.16. Accurate and repeatable identification is essential for monitoring change through time and is a fundamental tool for detecting the effects of environmental change on the Earth's biodiversity (p 91). This is a complex sector and it is difficult to generalise about the national capacity for species identification because identification skills are widely but unevenly spread. There is a strong professional identification sector which includes the Environment Agency, the conservation agencies, Defra laboratories such as the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science and the Central Science Laboratories, non-governmental organisations such as the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science, as well as the major taxonomic institutions, universities and commercial consultancies. There is also a robust voluntary sector, consisting of charities, associations and the many volunteers working for Local Record Centres.

3.17. In several key groups, for example birds, butterflies and some families of flowering plants, reliable identification guides are available and identification skills are strongly developed through the volunteer community, with highly organised support from organisations such as the RSPB, the British Trust for Ornithology, the BSBI and the RHS. There is no shortage of identification skills in such groups (Q 199).

3.18. However, in some groups (including those highlighted in paragraphs 3.8 and 3.9 above) identification skills are in short supply. We are concerned that the shortage of identification skills in these areas may compromise the capability in the UK for monitoring biodiversity change and implementing policy.

PHYLOGENETIC SYSTEMATICS

3.19. Of the three main tasks, phylogeny appears to be in the best health. In addition to the major institutions, there are active research groups investigating aspects of phylogeny in several UK universities and phylogenetic methods are central to expanding fields such as comparative genomics and metagenomics. The availability of Research Council funding for phylogenetics, for comparative genomics and for methodological advances has contributed to the viability of this area. It is increasingly being understood that each level in a hierarchical classification is of value for conservation (p 146). Phylogenetic studies group together at higher levels related species that share common ancestors and many biological properties; and then, as the JNCC explained, "these shared properties can be used predictively to investigate how related species can best be conserved" (p 146).

Supply and demand

3.20. There are many users but few producers of taxonomy. Defra describes itself as "a user of the outputs of systematics and taxonomy" (Q 100) and NERC describes itself in similar terms (p 37). Most organisations involved in making identifications are also users of basic taxonomic information, as are the teams of researchers involved in phylogeny. There are few producers—descriptive taxonomists—to meet this demand and this is, as we have noted, the area of systematic biology identified as being most at risk. In the recent past, taxonomic expertise was spread more widely through the universities, but the decline of taxonomy in the university sector has changed the dynamics of supply and demand. Major producers of new taxonomic research, such as RBG Kew, have indicated that they do not have sufficient taxonomists to cover all the areas for which expertise is being requested (pp 14ff ). The NHM has reduced the proportion of resource expended on descriptive taxonomy as the science undertaken there has become more diverse (p 2).

3.21. The Committee believes that the major taxonomic institutions alone will not be able to meet demand for taxonomy. It is therefore, in our view, critically important that there should be more effective and regular dialogue between the users and the producers of taxonomy on the priorities for developing UK systematic biology. Such dialogue should be facilitated by the Research Councils. The users of taxonomy are very important to the long-term survival of the science but no truly dynamic science can exist led only by its users because, as Dr Knapp reminded us, "users do not lead developments in science" (Q 135). This dialogue should take place within the context of developing a roadmap, an issue to which we turn in the next chapter (see paragraph 4.4).

Importance of the voluntary sector

3.22. The UK is extremely fortunate in having a large corps of citizen biologists who are actively engaged in biodiversity issues. Most biological recording in the UK is run by volunteers (Q 220). We received a range of evidence demonstrating the value of their contribution. For example, Dr Nic Lughadha of RBG Kew referred to the interaction between professionals and amateurs in mycology as "essential" and as a "very productive and close relationship" (Q 36). Professor Richard Lane, Director of Science at The NHM, described the relationship as "pretty intimate", and acknowledged that amateurs were often "extraordinarily knowledgeable" and would on occasions be used as "the authority" (Q 36).

3.23. As we have already observed, major organisations, such as the RSPB, the British Trust for Ornithology, the BSBI and the RHS, provide an impressive reservoir of expertise, particularly in species identification for "charismatic" groups of organisms like birds and flowering plants. Voluntary sector engagement has remained strong in such groups although, for example, a smaller percentage of members of the BSBI is made up of professionals now so there has been "a drift towards a preponderance of … volunteer recorders (Q 199). But, as Professor Battarbee told us, in other important indicator groups, like freshwater diatoms, a once-thriving volunteer community has all but vanished "as experienced professionals have retired or gifted amateurs have slipped away and not been replaced" by a new generation (Q 179).