Memorandum submitted by the Department
of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford
This submission touches on issues relevant to
the review from a university perspective. Currently, the Department
has an active research group in systematic botany that comprises
a university reader, Royal Society Research Fellow, Curator of
Herbaria, three externally funded research staff, 2-3 post-graduate
students, a herbarium technician, and a part-time partly externally
funded botanical artist. The group's work centres in and around
two recently refurbished herbaria that house 800,000 specimens
(http://herbaria.plants.ox.ac.uk/). The Oxford Plant Systematics
Group carries out undergraduate teaching, post graduate training
in systematic botany and research across a broad systematics agenda.
This level of activity is partly reliant upon financial support
from the Royal Society (two URF'S over the last ten years to fund
taxonomic monographs), and significant endowed funds that support
herbarium staff and maintenance of the collections. In addition,
these activities are supported by the department in the form of
a salary for a lecturer, and by external grants (currently 3 substantial
Darwin Initiative grants and a number of very small grants from
other bodies).
An important aspect of the modern systematics
approach is to combine elements of specimen-based revisionary
taxonomy with hypothesis driven research, in the belief that both
strands are synergistic for high quality research. This approach
builds on a rich history of traditional herbarium and field-based
taxonomy combined with new methods and sources of data to elucidate
evolutionary history. For example, writing monographs of key taxa
that combine descriptive taxonomy with analytical methods can
be pivotal in underpinning many of the big questions in evolutionary
biology while at the same time playing a central role in contributing
to the overall research goals of systematics. This approach underpins
the ability of university based systematists to participate with
colleagues in the RAE whilst maintaining some level of activity
in revisionary taxonomy. Given the current research environment
within Universities (funding, RAE) it is unrealistic for any active
researcher not to pursue high impact hypothesis driven science.
At the same time, combining revisionary taxonomy in the context
of a hypothesis driven grant application can be unrealistic given
that taxonomic elements tend to be long-term. For example, our
current monographic projects in Oxford on Strobilanthes
(c. 400 species) and Lupinus (c. 275) span 14 and 8 years
respectively. Without Royal Society funding these two monographs
would never have been started and the opportunities for graduate
training in taxonomy (7 PhD students since 1999) would not have
been realised.
Systematics is an integral element of the medium
and long term projected research priorities involving plant biology
for the 21st century (biodiversity, climate change, food, fuel,
fibre and feedstock security). Maintaining taxonomy within the
university sector even at existing levels is important for the
intellectual long term well being of the subject. It is also crucial
for training the next generation of systematists as well as educating
students in organismal biology. If this vision is realistic and
we strongly believe that it is, then the tension between high
impact science and descriptive taxonomy, which lies at the heart
of the perceived demise of taxonomy in the University sector,
has to be resolved.
An initiative for funding revisionary taxonomy
within the university sector would enable existing and future
systematists to apply for grants to maintain this aspect of their
activities. We believe that such an initiative would automatically
encourage taxonomic revisions of groups that are key to addressing
a range of pure and applied research priorities.
4 February 2008
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