Cook Islands Insect Expedition: Black Twig Borer

The black twig borer Xylosandrus compactus (Eichhoff, 1875). Image courtesy of Ken Walker via PaDIL. Licence: CC: BY.

A timely interview on Radio New Zealand aired this week demonstrates the importance of taxonomic expertise, and the need for my research on the weevils of the Cook Islands. A Radio NZ interview with Cook Islands Minister of Agriculture, Kiriau Turepu, discusses the impact of black twig borer on agriculture in the country.

The black twig borer is the common name of Xylosandrus compactus, an ambrosia beetle belonging to the weevil subfamily Scolytinae. This species has not been previously recorded from the Cook Islands, though a related species, Xylosandrus morigerus was recorded in a 1990 paper on the Scolytinae of the Cook Islands. Scolytine beetles are tricky beasts to identify due to their size, and so distinguishing between these two species is no easy task. Could this be a case of mistaken identity? Without seeing specimens or knowing more details of who identified it, it's hard to say.

Although it is suspected that the beetle may have been introduced from New Zealand or Australia, Xylosandrus compactus is not known from either country. However, it is known from other South Pacific countries, including Hawaii, Fiji, American Samoa and New Caledonia. The timing of establishment also seems to be in doubt, which will make investigating the invasion pathway somewhat tricky. Once again, specimens would provide valuable data, if regular collections have been made.

Mention is also made of damage on mango fruits. While the black twig borer has a wide host range (upwards of 200 species of plant), I am doubtful that the damage described can be attributed to it. Xylosandrus compactus bores in twigs and cultivates fungi along the tunnel walls (That's right! They're farmers!). The damage to mangos sounds like the work of a different beetle, the mango seed weevil Sternochetus mangiferae which has been in Rarotonga since around 2000. Knowing the difference is important for effective control and mitigation of damage.

For better or worse, it sounds like the black twig borer is well established on Rarotonga now, and I look forward to collecting specimens and adding it to the list of weevils known from the island. Once published, my research will hopefully allow rapid identification of future invaders, leading to more certain recognition of invasion pathways, and fast implementation of eradication or control measures.

References:
Beaver RA, Maddison PA. 1990. The bark and ambrosia beetles of the Cook Islands and Niue (Coleoptera: Scolytidae and Platypodidae). Journal of Natural History 24: 1365–1375.

Cook Islands Insect Expedition: Funding Granted!

Satellite image of Rarotonga, Cook Islands. Image via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public Domain.

As the tagline of this blog suggests, I have a profound interest in the biota and people of the South Pacific. I was fortunate to spend an influential part of my childhood in the Solomon Islands, then managed to work on beetles across the South Pacific for my MSc research. Since I've moved on to studying weevils, I've been very keen to contribute to a greater knowledge of the weevil fauna of the Pacific; but until now I haven't had the financial support, nor a topic that is simultaneously ambitious enough to be useful but also achievable.

The Cook Islands caught my eye about a year or so ago, when I realised that the weevil fauna of the group was essentially unknown. What little was published usually didn't get beyond a mention of "Rarotonga" or "Cook Islands" in the Distribution section of a species account in papers that had a different geographic focus. The superb Cook Islands Biodiversity Database lists 35 species of weevil from the Islands, which included several undescribed species and unidentified taxa. Further investigation of the literature revealed that it wasn't just the weevils that were barely known from the Cooks—few collecting expeditions have been undertaken, and not many insect taxa have published data available.

Holotype of Ptilopodius aitutakii Beaver and Maddison. One of two weevils described from the Cook Islands. Image courtesy of Auckland Museum. Licence: CC: BY.

This lack of knowledge surprised me, given the Cook Islands' strategic location in the South Pacific. Being approximately halfway between Samoa and Tahiti, it's in a key position to test hypotheses of the cause of the eastward attenuation of species richness and diversity that is such a feature of the biogeography of the South Pacific. Much has also been made of the fact that several taxa find their eastward limit around Samoa and Tonga, without having data from Niue or the Cook Islands to ascertain if this eastward limit is truly the case or not. A comprehensive work on the weevils of the Cook Islands would be able to confirm or refute some of these ideas of distribution of species in the South Pacific.

The small size of the islands made them attractive too. Rarotonga, the largest and highest of the group, is still only 62 km² in area and 650 m at its highest point. Not too much time (in theory at least!) would be required to make comprehensive collection in the available habitats.

The combination of the geographic location of the Cook Islands, and their small size lets me predict that weevil fauna will be fairly small and depauparate. I'm expecting that the total number of species will be around 200 or so. This is also beneficial, as it gives me hope that I may be able to write up the results of any collecting done in a timely and efficient manner. Additionally, although I expect a lot of the species to be endemic to the Cooks, the genera they represent are likely to be widely distributed, which would result in this work giving me a good foundation for further, future work on the weevils of other Pacific archipelagos

So there were the Cook Islands: small enough to collect everywhere in the space of a few weeks, an unknown fauna with a low number of species that could be written up in a short period of time and opportunity for first-hand experience with Pacific weevil taxa. In my opinion at least, this potential project held a lot of promise.

I am honoured that the board of the New Zealand Winston Churchill Memorial Trust considered it to have a lot of merit also. The trust funds overseas travel that bring New Zealanders into contact with other cultures, learn from their experiences and contribute to the community through their research and knowledge. Over 850 fellowships have been granted since the establishment of the Trust in 1965 and includes artists, educators, economists, academics and musicians. It's an impressive list of highly talented people and it's very humbling to be included among them.

The Trust has offered funding to cover two months in the Cook Islands, collecting weevils and other insects on Rarotonga, Atiu, Mangaia and Mitiaro. I expect it to be a great adventure, and one that I hope will prove productive and useful. I plan to go in March 2017, and intend to post semi-regular updates on aspects of the preparation for the trip, the expedition as it happens, and the aftermath of specimen sorting, preparation and identification. I very grateful that the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust has provided support for this expedition, and I'm excited about being able to make a significant contribution to our knowledge of the insects of the Cook Islands.

Stereo microscope stage for insects made out of LEGO®

The IMps. Photo courtesy of Dupont et al via ZooKeys. Licence: CC: BY.

I loved LEGO® as a child. It's been a long, long time since I last played with it, but I think I've just found a project that will encourage me back into it. A group of entomologists at the Natural History Museum have developed some designs to create microscope stages (dubbed IMps) with two axes of movement out of LEGO pieces, and have released them to the world in a paper published in Zookeys. These microscope stages allow fine movement of specimens under the microscope, allowing one to precisely manoeuvre the specimen in order to see or photograph particular structures. The designs published by Dupont et al are an elegant, portable and cheap solution; with the added benefit of playing with LEGO.

References:
Dupont S, Price B, Blagoderov V. 2015. IMp: The customizable LEGO® Pinned Insect Manipulator. ZooKeys 481: 131–138.

PhD week 46: The poetry of taxonomy

Not-so-gratuitous picture: My new favourite bird: the Fernbird Megalurus punctatus. Image out of copyright.

There is a poetry in the process of taxonomic description. Reducing an organism's appearence to a paragraph of characters requires a certain degree of creativity and wordsmithing. It it unfortunate, therefore that the end result should be somewhat unenthralling. Descriptions are useful though and writing them makes one appreciate good ones all the more.

---

Read:
   Pine-Coffin RS (translator). 1961. The confessions of Saint Augustine Middlesex: Penguin
   Chesterton GK. 1908. Orthodoxy. Image, New York (2001 Edition)
   Proverbs 6–8, Romans 1–11

Websites:
Dolph Schluter's Laboratory blog
geomorph R package
Spinnerette—A webcomic
ABC Religion and Ethics

Listened:
Antagonist A.D.—Nothing From No One

Watched:
Star Trek: Enterprise Season One

Japanese Journal of Systematic Entomology

I've just recently stumbled across the website for the Japanese Journal of Systematic Entomology, the new name for what was previously known as the Transactions of the Shikoku Entomological Society. I've encountered references to this journal before, but they've only recently made a home for themselves on the internet. They promise that older issues will become freely available, but it's a little early in the piece just yet. Here's hoping they're not too far away, because the contents look rather exciting!

ICZN allows electronic publications

Today, in a paper published in Zootaxa, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature announced that it had amended the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature to allow the availability of scientific names published in exclusively online publications. There are a few conditions of publication namely: 1) that the date of publication be contained within the publication and 2) that the publication be registered in ZooBank.

This announcement ends a debate that has been happening over the past several years. The issues at hand have been the tension between the obviously superior form of distribution that electronic works have, versus the known permanence of printed publications. The requirement that the work be registered is, I think, a prudent one, and one that will encourage the use and extend the utility of ZooBank.

Zoological taxonomy has entered a new and exciting era, and it will be interesting to see how the field responds and develops as a result of this decision.

Update
The announcement was published simultaneously in both Zootaxa and ZooKeys.

References:
    International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. 2012. Amendment of Articles 8,9,10,21 and 78 of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature to expand and refine methods of publication. Zootaxa 3450: 1–7.
    International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. 2012. Amendment of Articles 8,9,10,21 and 78 of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature to expand and refine methods of publication. ZooKeys 219: 1–10.

PhD week 8: Structuring taxonomic descriptions

Biological taxonomy is the science of categorising the plants and animals that share this world with us. A critical part of this characterisation is the writing of a description detailing the features which (done well) allows others to identify members of the species in question. Traditionally, this is a piece of prose that is very technical and very dry to read. There is, however, a move towards standardising and atomizing descriptive information, to enable it to be more readily re-used for a variety of applications.

The first attempt at this was the DELTA format, which was drafted as early as 1975. This format is becoming somewhat dated, and efforts are being made to produce an XML-based standard, known as Structured Descriptive Data (SDD).

Computer programs that can be used to produce these structured datasets include LUCID, xper2 and Open DELTA. Somewhat more complex is the taxonomy editor produced by the European Distributed Insitute of Taxonomy, that appears to be the tool for populating their scratchpads.

For some fairly detailed commentary regarding the promises and challenges offered by this revolution in taxonomic data management, ZooKeys published a special issue on e-Infrastructures for data publishing in biodiversity science.

---

Read:
   Wallis GP, Trewick SA. 2009. New Zealand phylogeography: evolution on a small continent. Molecular Ecology 18: 3548–3580
    Grant PR, Grant BR. 2008. How and Why Species Multiply. The Radiation of Darwin's Finches. Princeton: Princeton University Press
   McCulloch D. 2010. A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years London: Penguin
   Psalms 44–47

Websites:
New Zealand's Geological Timescale
Importing DICOM images into Blender
3D slicer
ImageJ wiki

Watched:
Game of Thrones Season One

PhD week 3: Francis Polkinghorne Pascoe

Taxonomy has had a long history, with the current system of naming organisms being proposed by Carolus Linnaeus in 1758. As you can imagine, the task of naming the world's biodiversity has engaged a large number of people throughout the past 250 years. As part of the process of identifying species and describing new ones, we come across the names of the people who have gone before and worked on the same creatures. Learning more about the lives of these people can serve practical ends, such as resolving when and where specimens may have originated from. Often though, it is simply very satisfying to learn more about the people who have been fascinated by the same subject, and makes one feel part of a story with a past and a future.

Portrait of Francis P Pascoe. Courtesy of the Royal Entomological Society via Zimmerman (1994).

Francis Polkinghorne Pascoe (1813–1893) was an English entomologist who was originally trained in the medical profession and served in the British Navy for a time, and travelled widely during this time. He returned to England and got married. It proved to be a tragically short marriage, and upon his wife's death in 1851 he devoted himself to natural history, focusing particularly on the taxonomy of beetles. He was fairly broad in this work, though he made particularly important contributions on the longhorn beetles and the weevils; and the fauna of Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. He was made a fellow of the Royal Entomological Society, and was president of that prestigous organisation for a time.

He described a number of the genera of New Zealand weevils. Most importantly for me, he described Irenimus and its type species, Irenimus parilis. This species is important as it fixes the identity of the genus to those species that are similar to it. It will be an important addition to my collection.


References:
Zimmerman EC. 1993. Australian Weevils (Coleoptera: Curculionoidea). Volume III - Nanophyidae, Rhynchophoridae, Erirhinidae, Curculionidae: Amycterinae, Literature consulted. CSIRO, Australia

---

Read:
Deans AR, Yoder MJ, Balhoff JP. 2012. Time to change how we describe biodiversity. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 27(2): 78-84

Wilkins JS. 2009. Defining Species. A Sourcebook from Antiquity to Today. Peter Lang, New York

McCulloch D. 2010. A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years London: Penguin

Kirkpatrick R. 2008. Dark Heart. Sydney: Voyager

Psalms 22–27; 1 Corinthians 13

Websites:
Open DELTA project

Jon Chui—Pictoral guide to interpreting IR spectra

How to Interpret Near Infrared Spectra for a Variety of Applications

Stuff.co.nz—McMurdo Sound's toothfish population at risk

Stuff.co.nz—A helping hand for Hutton's shearwater

Tetepare: The last wild island

Listened:
Rvd Dr John Polkinghorne—An introduction to the science and religion dialogue (mp3 file)

Blindside—With Shivering Hearts We Wait

Watched:
Alaskan Audubon Society—Godwit Migration

Trigonopterus diversity in New Guinea

The weevil genus Trigonopterus is found in the islands of Indonesia, eastwards to Fiji and Samoa. There are around 90 described species, but thanks to the work of Alexander Riedel, the true diversity of the genus is becoming apparent. One of the latest works of Riedel and coauthors was published earlier this year in PLoS ONE, and describes how a DNA barcoding approach is helping to make sense of the group.

In this study, over 1000 specimens were collected from five broad regions of New Guinea. Initial sorting suggested that there were 270 species represented in this group with each area possessing an average of 41 species. After sorting, these specimens had their COI gene sequenced and analysed using a number of different methods. These analyses slightly increased the total number of species to 279, due to the presence of very similar-looking species being present in the sample.

The authors argue that when facing sorting through groups of greater than 50 species, it becomes inefficient to circumscribe them using traditional means. In these situations, DNA barcoding approaches can make the task more tractable and form a solid base for ongoing taxonomic research. In addition, they recommend that Trigonopterus form a key group for use in biodiversity assessment surveys within Melanesia.

This study shows how much there is to learn about the biota of Melanesia. Unfortunately though, the are resources available for researchers interested are relatively scarce. Additionally, most of the research done is by researchers based in places such as Europe and the States, with involvement by Pacific Islanders generally being limited to providing technical assistance. This paper is a case in point. While a 'man blo niu guinea' is a coauthor, he was not involved in the experimental design or in the writing of the paper; both valuable skills for success in science. Locally based scientists in the Pacific will continue to struggle until more funding becomes available from their governments, and they take opportunity to be involved in all parts of the scientific process from design to publication.

References:
Tanzler R, Sagata K, Surbakti S, Balke M, Riedel A (2012) DNA barcoding for community ecology—How to tackle a hyperdiverse, mostly undescribed Melanesian fauna. PLoS ONE 7(1): e28832.

New Guinea Botanist position at Kew

The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew is one of the most venerable and respected institutions for botanical research worldwide, and now they're wanting someone to work on the flora of New Guinea. Once completed, this project will be a valuable addition to our knowledge of one of the world's richest rainforest habitats. However, it will be interesting to see how they work in with current projects providing information on the trees of Papua New Guinea.

Vanuatu Caddisflies

A recently published paper by Kjell Johanson revises the caddisfly fauna of Vanuatu, descibing 12 new species and providing a key to the species currently known from the archipelago. It is an important contribution to the knowledge of the caddisfly fauna of the region, as most of the previous work done on the fauna of the region is several decades old.

A couple of things stood out to me in this paper. The first is that Orthotricha has not been recorded from any other oceanic Pacific islands. These are small (2-3 mm wing length) creatures, and it is likely that they just haven't been collected elsewhere in the Pacific. The second was their discovery that a female of Triplectides australis had a large number of larvae inside her abdomen. While I was hitherto unaware that ovoviviparity occurred in caddisflies, it turns out that this has been known since 1890, the first instance of it being confirmed by Prof. Wood-Mason in the following manner:

I threw the insect alive into a liqueur-glass of whiskey that happened to be ready at hand.

Adult caddisflies tend to be overlooked by the general public, usually being confused as small, fairly dull-looking moths. Their larvae are aquatic where they form an important part of the macro-invertebrate fauna of streams, and can be useful as indicators of water quality and stream health. Unfortunately, very little biological information is recorded in the paper, and larvae are not considered. In part this is due to Malaise and light traps providing the bulk of the material that was considered in the revision. Discovering and describing larvae and their habitats is a natural application of the taxonomic effort of this paper.

References

Johanson KA, Wells A, Malm T, Espeland M. 2011. The Trichoptera of Vanuatu. Deutsche Entomologische Zeitschrift 58(2): 279-320.

Wood-Mason J. 1890. On a viviparous caddis fly. Annals and Magazine of Natural History 6th series, 6: 139-141.

Old codes

The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature is the document that details the rules of how the scientific names of animals are managed. It's a complex document with a rich history, and it is necessary to consult previous editions for correct knowledge as to the reasoning behind some of the provisions of the code. Old editions tend to be fairly hard to come by, but thankfully the Biodiversity Heritage Library has them digitised and on the interweb for all to enjoy. Thus, it holds copies of the first (1961), second (1964), third (1985), and fourth (current, 1999) editions are all available. The current edition is also available from the official website as an indexed html version.

Yet another estimate of the number of species on earth

This week in PLoS Biology, paper was published that estimates the number of species on earth being around the 8 million mark (give or take 2 million). This study takes a rarefaction-type approach, seeing how the rate of discovery of higher taxa is decreasing, and extrapolating from that to the species level, resulting in the figure of 8.7 million with an error range of 1.3 million.

This study is nothing new—there's been a number of estimates published over the past two decades that attempt to give a number to the total diversity of life on earth. While this one does appear to be a bit more robust, all these studies are based on various assumptions, and have given some very different figures. There seems to be some sort of convergence on the 10 million mark, but at the end of the day, we just don't know.

I guess the value of these papers are that they make public how far we have to go before we know the most basic thing about the other organisms that share the world with us. I still surprise people when I tell them my tales of discovering new species, the general belief being that we know essentially all there is to know about biology. However, unless there are some useful outcomes (e.g. increased funding or employment) from them, I view these papers with a certain cynicism. We know the task ahead of us is huge. It'd be great to be able to dive into it whole-heartedly and without needing to worry about the finances.

The paper did alert me to the World Taxonomist Database, a register of taxonomists from around the world and encompassing all taxa. The register gives contact details for each of the researchers in the database, as well as their taxonomic and geographic interests. It's a very handy resource.

Harvard's Caribbean Insects

Harvard University has has an interest and presence in the Caribbean for the past 150 years. As you can imagine, they've accumulated a lot of information on the biota of the region. They've made a sizable portion of their entomological knowledge available on the Caribbean Insects @ Harvard Entomology webpage, which is very nice of them. of particular interest are is the insect and plant database which you can search to find specimen information, or cool photos, like the image of Eurhinus festivus suturalis above. They've also made a whole lot of papers available through their taxonomic literature database, though unfortunately I was unable to access the database for some reason or another. Finally, they've made a number of posters of different taxa available, and very kindly sent me copies of their beautiful weevil and bark beetle ones. Good on them for creating all this cool stuff!

Rings and starships: A new shark embraces pop culture

I couldn't let this one go past without commenting on it. Today in Zootaxa, a description was published today that has references to two highly regarded elements of pop culture in the past 50 years. Gollum suluensis is a deep water shark from the Philippines whose name calls to mind Gollum from The Lord of the Rings, and Captain Sulu from Star Trek.

Before latin scholars point out that the -ensis suffix to the specific name refers to a place not to a person, I will clarify the specific name actually refers to the Sulu Sea. The generic name though is genuine. Established in 1973 by Leonard Compagno, the original description gives this explanation for the name:

Gollum (treated as a masculine noun), named for the antihero of J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, to whom this shark bears some resemblane in form and habits.

Appropriately enough, the type species lurks around New Zealand.

References
Compagno LJV. 1973. Ctenacis and Gollum, two new genera of sharks (Selachii: Carcharhinidae). Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences 4(39): 257–272.

Last PR, Gaudiano JP. 2011. Gollum suluensis sp. nov. (Carcharhiniformes: Pseudotriakidae), a new gollumshark from the southern Philippines. Zootaxa 3002: 17-30.

Bohumiljania of New Caledonia

Today in Zootaxa a paper was published describing a number of species in the leaf beetle genus Bohumiljania from New Caledonia. Unfortunately, these species aren't going to win many prizes in the beauty stakes—they're all pretty nondescript, generic looking chrysomelids (See the picture of Bohmiljania aoupinie above). However, it belongs to a group (the Spilopyrinae), that displays a classical Gondwanan distribution pattern so it will be of interest to those people who are interested in the biogeography of New Caledonia. These beetles tend to be found in mountainous areas, and all known hostplants are in the Myrtaceae.

Incidentally, this is Zootaxa's 3000th issue. Pretty good going for a journal that celebrated its 10th birthday on 28 May this year.


Reference:
Reid CAM, Beatson M. 2011. Revision of the New Caledonian endemic genus Bohumiljania Monrós (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae: Spilopyrinae). Zootaxa 3000: 1-43. The full 6 MB article is here

Pseudoscorpions

Pseudoscorpions are reasonably common, though inconspicuous, creatures that are found in a range of environments, particularly soil and leaf litter. They are predacious, feeding on things like springtails, bark lice and other invertebrates that they catch with their pedipalps.

I've been interested in pseudoscorpions for quite some time, though I have not yet deliberately retained specimens or allowed myself time to look at them. I recently stumbled across a site that contains a lot of useful information for the budding pseudoscorpion enthusiast. The pseudoscorpion site contains information on how to collect, preserve and identify these usually overlooked creatures.

For those interested in the New Zealand fauna, Max Beier published a key to the species of New Zealand and Norfolk Island in 1976 It is available online here on the Bugz Bibliography of New Zealand Insects Online. Beier also published on the pseudoscorpions of Micronesia, also available on Bugz.

NB: Bugz unfortunately does not provide completely stable URLs for the papers in the database. If the direct links to the papers do not work, search Bugz manually for access to the papers.


References:
Beier M. 1976. The pseudoscorpions of New Zealand, Norfolk and Lord Howe. New Zealand Journal of Zoology 3(3):199-246

Beier M. 1957. Pseudoscorpionida. Insects of Micronesia 3(1):1-64

Apodrosus revision and blog

Apodrosus is a genus of broad-nosed weevil found in the isles of the Caribbean. Apodrosus wilcotti, pictured above, is from Puerto Rico. It has recently been revised in a well written and illustrated paper by Jennifer Girón and Nico Franz. This paper was part of Jennifer's Masters degree project, and the process of conducting the revision was chronicled on her blog, appropriately titled Apodrosus. It's a great insight into the taxonomic process, and the combination of scientific thought, careful observation and personal passion that it requires. Other valuable outputs from Jennifer's work include a poster and a presentation.

They don't publish papers like this anymore...

Modern scientific writing is very detached and impersonal, a style which encourages objectivity but makes it somewhat difficult to read. This wasn't always the case. I came across a paper by Thomas Vernon Wollaston published in the periodical Annals and Magazine of Natural History, one of the top scientific journals of the time. The title is enough to make you want to take a second look: "On certain musical Curculionidae...."

His introduction goes:

Whilst residing in the remote and almost inaccessible village of Taganana (towards Point Anaga), in the north of Teneriffe ... my attention was called to a peculiarity in a beautiful species of Acalles ... which I do not remember to have seen recorded concerning any other Coleopterous insect whatsoever.

Without any further ado, he launches into the methods section:

It was on the 22nd of May that my Portuguese servant ... brought me home eleven specimens of a large Acalles which he had captured within the dried and hollow stems of a plant growing on the rocky slopes towards the sea ... he was about, in this instance, to throw away these rotten stems as worthless, when he was arrested by a loud grating, or almost chirping, noise, as of many creatures in concert ... On shaking the hollow stem, so as to arouse its inmates, and putting his ear alongside it, the whole plant appeared musical, as though enchanted ....

The methods continue:

So pleased was I with the accomplishments of these anomalous musicians, when brought to me, that I felt quite a reluctance (even though an entomologist) to put them to death. I therefore made a compromise with my feelings, and killed only eight of them.

The results of this investigation are that:

... in the case of the Acalles, the pygidium, although roughened, is not very sensibly so; whilst the small portion of the inner surface of the elytra against which (at each successive pulsation) it is brought to play is far less strictly file-like than was the triangular mesothoracic space of Deucalion [a genus of longhorn beetles that also make a noise] ... yet this is certainly the contrivance by means of which this little Curculionidous musician is enabled to perform its anal "song".

I don't think that Nature would appreciate a piece written in this style...

Reference:
Wollaston TV. 1860. On certain musical Curculionidae; with descriptions of two new Plinthi. Annals and Magazine of Natural History Series 3, 6:14-19

A Fading Field?

A year or so ago, The Scientist published an article on "A Fading Field: Traditional taxonomists are an endangered species. Could their unique brand of knowledge disappear, too?". The authors talked to a number of leading taxonomists, including Anthony Cognato and Jiri Hulcr (always good to see the Curculionidae represented!), and have produced a very well-written piece on the lamentable state of taxonomy. There is little here that is new for those of us who follow these things, but unlike pieces, this is actually a good read.

The key issues in my view are jobs and communication. The lack of jobs discourage all interested students from pursuing a career in the field, prefering to become competent in other disciplines (often molecular systematics or bioinformatics) that has better employment opportunities. It would be hard enough if the jobs that were available were being replaced, but it is criminal when instutions of the calibre of the Kew Botanical Gardens do not hire new taxonomists when the previous generation retire. As a scientist-in-training I am experiencing this right now, desperately wanting to devote my time to taxonomic discovery, but having to be realistic enough to forsee that I probably won't be able to get work that is full-time taxonomic research. I also know a number of other students that would be extremely interested in taxonomy, if there was the possibility of getting jobs.

Communication is extremely important, but one that many taxonomists are not particularly proficient at. Taxonomy undergirds the remainder of biology, and the applicability of that biological research often stands or falls on how well the taxonomy that supports it has been done. However, you very rarely hear about it. Biosecurity, pest management, and conservation are all heavily dependant on taxonomic expertise. This needs to be publicised much more broadly. We taxonomists reguarly moan about how little we're valued. Possibly if we inspire others with the beauty and value of our work and how excited we are about it, we won't have to suffer our inferiority complex so much.