Memorandum submitted by the Royal Entomological
Society
1. The Royal Entomological Society (RES),
founded in 1833, is the UK's professional body for entomologists,
with around 1800 members. We produce seven journals on all aspects
of entomology, including Systematic Entomology, recognised
as one of the world's leading journals for insect taxonomy. In
addition we publish a series of identification guides to British
insects (Handbooks for the Identification of British Insects,
begun over 50 years ago), which includes the definitive checklists
of the British species. Although we are concerned with just one
group of organisms, the insects are widely regarded as the most
species-rich group on earth.
2. The RES has an active programme of publishing
handbooks to the British insects, yet we are unable to do so as
quickly as we would like. The difficulty is not in funding the
publications, nor in selling the finished products. The limiting
factor is the lack of authors willing or able to write definitive
accounts of many taxonomic groups. In recent years most of our
authors have been amateur workers or retired professionals. Approaches
to professional biologists usually result in a clear statement
that their employer does not consider work on the British fauna
to be a high priority, or in some cases does not consider taxonomy
to be a genuine research area, even though the biologist in question
may be a recognised authority on the group. There are approximately
24,000 species of insects in the UK, yet we estimate that there
are no modern comprehensive identification guides for at least
6,000 of these. These gaps are not in the smaller and obscure
groups, however, as there is a serious lack of information for
many groups of Coleoptera (beetles), Hemiptera (bugs), Diptera
(flies) and Hymenoptera (ants, bees and wasps). Among these insects
groups are many plant pests and important pollinators of crops.
Our inability to identify them reliably is not only a clear indicator
of the lack of targeted taxonomic research, but it may also have
serious implications for the future as it seems inevitable that
agriculture and sourcing our own food will be increasingly important
in the coming decades.
3. A study of the numbers of UK insect taxonomists
who were actively undertaking research (Hopkins & Freckleton,
2002) was published in the same year as the last Select Committee's
report, and so was not referred to in the evidence submitted at
that time. The paper shows a clear decline in the numbers of both
amateur and professional taxonomists, and our own difficulties
in identifying authorities on many groups of insects confirm that
the decline is continuing. Two recent editorials in Systematic
Entomology (Cranston & Krell, 2007; Krell & Cranston,
2008) drew attention to the low numbers of authors based in the
UK publishing in the journal. In the last six years (2002-2007)
the number of principal authors from the UK, in relation to the
total number of authors, was: 3/18, 5/26, 3/31, 1/28, 2/32, 1/40.
Although this averages at about 10 per cent of authors from the
UK, the decline in the last few years is cause for concern. For
comparison, the same ratio in 1995 was 5/21, or about 24 per cent.
4. The UK is fortunate in having a substantial
number of amateur naturalists, some of whom are the acknowledged
taxonomic experts on their groups, but such a situation is not
sustainable. Amateurs follow their own interests, and they do
not necessarily train successors. Similarly, many of the larger
UK museums rely heavily on retired staff to cover taxonomic groups;
again this is an unstable situation that is an unsatisfactory
substitute for long-term strategic planning of staff succession.
No doubt this is partly a result of having to chase external funding,
and partly because they cannot rely on finding taxonomists on
certain groups, given the lack of taxonomic training at university
level. However, it is clearly unsatisfactory that many agriculturally
or medically important groups of insects no longer have professional
specialists working on them, given the impending world food crisis.
5. The current inquiry into systematics
and taxonomy is the latest in a long line of investigations extending
back to the Review Group on Taxonomy of the Advisory Board for
the Research Councils set up in 1974 (ABRC, 1979). That report
commented (p. 45) that developments in areas like molecular biology
had overshadowed taxonomy, leaving it "undeservedly under-rated
and in low esteem." Sadly their optimism for future improvement
was not justified. Even after the previous two inquiries by the
House of Lords Select Committee, there have been numerous calls
for dedicated funding for taxonomy, for recognition of its fundamental
importance, as well as suggestions for a more integrated approach
to the organisation of the whole discipline (eg Claridge, 2001).
There is no need to labour the point: basic taxonomy is still
seen as under-resourced and poorly regarded in many circles, and
this situation looks unlikely to change unless a new approach
is adopted.
6. Current funding priorities for research
and development in systematic biology include molecular systematics,
automated identification systems and database networks. Molecular
systematics, including DNA bar-coding, is a valuable new tool,
but it does not replace traditional morphological taxonomy. The
former Head of the Entomology Department at the Natural History
Museum has said that what we need is not "DNA-exclusive or
DNA-intensive classifications, but integrative taxonomy"
(Wheeler, 2008; italics original). Automated systems for species
recognition such as DAISY (Gaston & O'Neill, 2004) have the
potential to remove much routine identification work from taxonomic
experts, but this serves to free the specialist to do taxonomy;
it does not replace need for professional taxonomists. It is important
to distinguish between taxonomists and those who make use of the
products of taxonomy such as keys for identification; the former
is a group of innovative research workers on whom the latter group
depends. Networks of taxonomic databases, whether of primary descriptive
data or of collection data are attractive and popular tools, but
they are essentially concerned with manipulating metadata and
do not generate new information. Thus all these activities and
new developments are extremely valuable and are indeed essential
for the future development of systematic studies in an evolving
discipline. But clearly they all depend on the continuation of
basic morphological taxonomy for their relevance to be maintained.
Short-term funding for the development of new techniques is no
substitute for sustainable funding that will ensure the continuance
of a stable taxonomic information system.
7. Clearly, another round of bemoaning the
decline of taxonomy, asking for more government funding (or for
existing funding to be ring-fenced) and setting up more committees
to assess the decline in years to come, will be fruitless. Even
if extra funding were available, the training of new taxonomists
is a long-term commitment, and the current situation cannot be
reversed overnight. There are already calls for traditional taxonomy
to change its image, by moving from a paper-based and intractable
archive to a web-based, freely accessible system that can be rapidly
revised and integrated with other taxon-linked data (eg Godfray,
2002). But such innovations cannot be funded by individual institutions,
nor will they attract the current funding bodies if the end result
is seen to be of limited or parochial value.
8. The current downward spiral of reducing
funding for traditional taxonomy, no training of taxonomists,
difficulties in recruiting specialists and lack of taxon-based
succession planning is the result of a feedback-loop with each
decline influencing the others; it is unlikely to be solved by
addressing just one of these issues. The way forward, if all interested
parties are serious about reforming the situation, is an integrated
approach to bring taxonomy into the 21st century, and this will
require cooperation between learned societies, taxonomic institutions,
universities and funding bodies. But this collaborative effort
must lead to action, not merely more words, and this will only
happen if one of these groups acts as a champion of the cause.
In general, the societies such as the Linnean Society and Systematics
Association do not have the resources to undertake this, though
the broad-ranging expertise of their members will be invaluable.
It therefore seems that, with their existing resources of staff,
collections and libraries, the UK's major museums are the only
contenders for this championing role. In the longer term the establishment
of a national systematics body may be realised (Claridge, 2001).
9. Moving in this integrated and collaborative
direction will bring the initiative back to the taxonomists themselves,
enabling them to set their own scientific priorities, rather than
having these dictated by external funding pressures. Even the
"New Taxonomy" (NERC, 1992), while actively promoting
the funding of new techniques in systematic biology, still recognised
that "the case for working on a group should be made on the
basis of scientific arguments" and that there should be "flexibility
in funding to support this kind of taxonomy."
10. The continued decline in numbers of
both amateur and professional taxonomists is rapidly leading to
the marginalisation of the UK as a world-class taxonomic power.
We have large and irreplaceable natural history collections held
in a wide range of institutions in the UK, which collectively
comprise a unique resource. Failing to make good use of these
species-rich and historically unique collections and failing to
encourage our existing taxonomic experts is not just a missed
scientific opportunity; it is a betrayal of our heritage. In order
to fill the important gaps in our knowledge of British insects
indicated above (para 2) an integrated approach to the planning
of basic taxonomic research is thus an urgent necessity. Such
a coordinated effort is essential for the future of UK taxonomy
as a whole, and is a vital component of the UK Biodiversity Action
Plan in response to the Rio Convention of Biological Diversity.
REFERENCES:
ABRC (1979) Taxonomy in Britain. HMSO,
London: 126 pp.
Claridge, M.F. (2001) Systematic biology initiative.
Antenna: Bulletin of the Royal Entomological Society 25:
268-272.
Cranston, P.S. & Krell, F.-T. (2007) Editorial.
Systematic Entomology 32: 1.
Gaston, K.J. & O'Neill, M.A. (2004) Automated
species identification: why not? Philosophical Transactions
of the Royal Society of London (B) 359: 655-667.
Godfray, H.C.J. (2002) How might more systematics
be funded? Antenna: Bulletin of the Royal Entomological Society
26: 11-17.
Hopkins, G.W. & Freckleton, R.P. (2002)
Declines in the numbers of amateur and professional taxonomists:
implications for conservation. Animal Conservation 5:
245-249.
Krell, F.-T. & Cranston, P.S. (2008) Editorial.
Systematic Entomology 33: 1.
NERC (1992) Evolution and biodiversity: the
new taxonomy. NERC, Swindon: 44 pp.
Wheeler, Q.D. (2008) Undisciplined thinking:
morphology and Hennig's unfinished revolution. Systematic Entomology
33: 2-7.
January 2008
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