Memorandum submitted by CABI (CAB International)[28]
1. What is the state of systematics research
and taxonomy in the UK? What are the current research priorities?
What are the barriers, if any, to delivering these priorities?
Systematic mycological activity has continued
to decline in the UK since the previous House of Lords report.
The number of fungal (and lichenological) systematists in UK universities
is now almost zero, staff have not been replaced in Government
institutions, and CABI's capacity has suffered a further substantial
reduction. Printed systematic research output has declined significantly,
and most papers from UK sources now come from retired staff and
knowledgeable amateurs. Without active intervention, it is likely
that fungal systematics will be effectively extinct in the UK
within ten years.
2. What is the role of systematics and taxonomy
and, in particular, in what way do they contribute to research
areas such as biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services and
climate change? How important is this contribution and how is
it recognised in the funding process? How is systematics integrated
in other areas of research?
Fungi play critical roles in ecosystem services
(especially carbon cycling) and plant health (mycorrhizas, endophytes,
pathogens), and are likely to play a major role in buffering ecosystems
against climate change. There does seem to be an "out of
sight, out of mind" approach to funding; fungi are considered
to be "difficult" to work with as they are mostly hidden
in soil etc.; this would argue for higher levels of funding to
compensate for the technical challenges. Fungi are also key organisms
in applied areas such as plant and animal health, trade, pharmaceuticals,
industrial enzymes etc.—this questionnaire seems to ignore
the fact that systematics plays a very significant role in human
development as well as natural ecosystems.
3. Does the way in which systematics research
is organised and co-ordinated best meet the needs of the user
community? What progress has been made in setting up a body to
lead on this? What contribution do the leading systematics research
institutions make both nationally and internationally?
In mycological terms, coordination is hardly
relevant as there are few specialist staff to coordinate. On a
wider scale, initiatives in the past (eg the UK Systematics Forum)
had rather limited value, and organizations such as the Linnean
Society and Institute for Biology perform some of these roles.
Assuming funding is not unlimited, funds should be concentrated
on institutions actually performing the work rather than setting
up coordination bodies.
4. What level of funding would be needed to
meet the need for taxonomic information now and in the future?
Who should be providing this funding?
Information is currently provided largely by
the private sector through subscriptions to journals, sale of
books etc, but the internet is very rapidly gaining ground especially
in databases of names, distributions etc. There is a widespread,
somewhat naive feeling amongst the taxonomic community (and some
consumers) that all taxonomic information should be free to the
end user. However, public sector organizations do not have the
resources to achieve this and the private sector needs to recover
their costs.
5. How does funding in other countries compare?
Could there be more international collaboration? If so, what form
should this collaboration take and how might it be achieved?
Systematic mycology is well funded in some European
countries, but in general the level of support is poor and declining.
The USA has benefited from substantial investment in taxonomy
recently through the National Science Foundation; our own collaboration
with these initiatives has been very restricted as funding has
not been open to us. CABI has a worldwide remit to provide support
(mostly financed by third parties such as the Darwin Initiative)
to systematics research with a focus on developing countries,
and has worked productively with organizations such as BioNET-International
to build capacity in countries poor in financial resources. The
support that UK taxonomic institutions provide to less-developed
nations is substantial, and deserves emphasis in this review.
6. What impact have developments in DNA sequencing,
genomics and other new technologies had on systematics research?
In what way has systematics embraced new technologies and how
can these research areas interact successfully and efficiently?
Sequencing has revolutionized systematic mycology
and our understanding of it in the last 5-10 years; the contribution
of the UK has been minimal and has led to a substantial reduction
in international influence by our nation. However, there is insufficient
effort in the integration of morphological and molecular classifications,
leading to duplication of effort and the risk of 250 years of
research being abandoned. This is a particularly important issue
in the naming of species and organism groups; taxa are interpreted
in different ways leading to widespread confusion. In the long
term, molecular systematics will completely supplant morphological
systems; at present the UK is doing little or nothing to prepare
for this event.
DATA COLLECTION,
MANAGEMENT, MAINTENANCE
AND DISSEMINATION
7. Does the way in which taxonomic data is
collected, managed and maintained best meet the needs of the user
community? What is the state of local and national recording schemes?
Generally yes, with the support of the National
Biodiversity Network and international initiatives such as the
Global Biodiversity Information Facility. However, most recording
schemes operate through volunteer activity, often associated with
Learned Societies for some of which the majority of their income
is derived from publications via traditional publishers. The push
for open/free access to all new scientific knowledge (eg the recent
change in US law to mandate this for all publically funded research)
threatens this model and thus will precipitate a decline in the
income for these organizations and their ability to fund data
collection and management. More coordination (as well as financial
support) would be beneficial. Government institutions should have
the resources to play a more active role in support of these activities.
8. What is the role of the major regional
museums and collections? How are taxonomic collections curated
and funded?
CABI has one of the five most important dried
fungus collections (fungal "herbaria") on a global scale,
and also houses the UK national fungus culture collection. Both
collections are functionally digitized with key information available
on-line at no cost. CABI receives no external funding for this,
and cannot continue to support UK (and global) mycology in this
way indefinitely. CABI is currently in negotiations with RBG Kew
to transfer the dried collections to Kew and is seeking funds
from Defra to support this action, and to find financial support
for the living (culture) collection through joint screening initiatives.
9. What progress has been made in developing
a web-based taxonomy? How do such initiatives fit in with meeting
demand for systematics and taxonomy information? How do UK-led
initiatives fit in with international initiatives and is there
sufficient collaboration?
Web-based taxonomy is not fundamentally different
from traditional taxonomy, it simply provides a more efficient
system of data management, analysis and delivery. CABI provides
substantial amounts of taxonomic opinion free on the internet,
but cannot do this indefinitely without some form of income stream
to pay for its generation and, perhaps more importantly, maintenance.
CABI is a founding member of the UK based, but of global extent
(approx. 50 collaborators), Species 2000 which, in collaboration
with the North American (Canada, Mexico, USA) based ITIS, produces
the Catalogue of Life (currently at version 8). The CoL is used
by many global initiatives and organization not least of which
are GBIF, Encyclopaedia of Life, IUCN, FAO. However, funding for
this activity is not secure for the medium and long term future.
10. What needs to be done to ensure that web-based
taxonomy information is of high quality, reliable and user-friendly?
Using a combination of "community"
software and tools, Web 2 technology, automated data rankings
and top level custodianship/validation will ensure high quality,
reliable and user-friendly (at many levels) taxonomic information
(see also 9 above). Following on from this, a national web-based
identification system is technically feasible, but cannot be delivered
without national coordination and financial support. This is particularly
important as existing systems are often developed by amateurs
without sufficient taxonomic knowledge to ensure that their images
etc. are correctly identified, or perhaps worse still, by high
profile data-harvesting portals which rapidly become out-of-date.
11. How does the taxonomic community engage
with the non-taxonomic community? What role do field studies play?
SKILLS BASE
12. What are the numbers and ages of trained
taxonomists working in UK universities and other organisations?
We are not aware of any specialist systematic
mycologists in the UK University system. Government institutions
employ a small number, but almost all are nearing retirement age,
and recent practice seems to have been not to replace systematics
specialists in mycology. CABI currently employs four systematics
staff but all are nearing retirement and will not be replaced
(see below).
13. What is the state of training and education
in systematics and taxonomy? Are there any gaps in capacity? Is
the number of taxonomists in post, and those that are being trained,
sufficient to meet current and future needs across all taxonomic
subject areas?
CABI receives three per cent of its income (roughly
£600,000 per annum) from member government contributions,
with the United Kingdom contributing around one third of this
sum. These funds are to support the running costs of the organization
as a whole, which has a much wider remit than systematic research
(see www.cabi.org). Until recently the UK funds were provided
by Defra (and perhaps could therefore be implicitly construed
to support systematics) but are now the responsibility of DfID,
so priorities for spending are likely to move even further away
from taxonomic support towards development projects. Member country
income has declined substantially since 1992, when 11 per cent
(£1.7 million per annum) was provided by government contributions
(the United Kingdom provided £584,000). In the last 15 years
CABI has drastically reduced the number of PhD grade taxonomists
in its employ (see table below), and decided to prioritise research
in fungi (mycology), in part because of the paucity of fungi specialists
elsewhere and the shortage of taxonomic data on fungi. However,
even in this priority area the number of taxonomists has been
reduced by 80 per cent since 1992. Furthermore, the taxonomic
activity of the mycologists is increasingly general with more
time devoted to income-generating rather than basic taxonomic
activities. CABI is now planning to divest itself of specialist
in-house systematics expertise completely through transfer of
its remaining taxonomists to RBG Kew, and to buy in specialist
services when required.
Taxonomists employed by CAB International
1992-2008
| 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 |
4 February 2008
28
CABI (CAB International) was formerly the Commonwealth Agricultural
Bureaux. It is an intergovernmental not-for-profit organisation
with centres in ten locations worldwide and with headquarters
in the UK, with a major research portfolio in applied biological
sciences for sustainable agriculture and environmental safety.
Its origins nearly 100 years ago were as a agricultural pest identification
and information service, funded by a consortium of countries of
the then British Empire. CABI's remaining taxonomic capacity is
focused on mycology, so this response comes from that perspective. Back
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