1. EDIT General Meeting Carvoeiro, 23-25 January 2008

2. EDIT General Meeting Carvoeiro, 23-25 January 2008 EDIT Future trends of Taxonomy Overview Rafael Zardoya & Ignacio Ribera Symposium Organizers

3. EDIT General Meeting Carvoeiro, 23-25 January 2008 25 European scientists actively publishing in taxonomy from 12 countries. They provided a personal statement regarding the current status of taxonomy in their countries 90 EDIT members 17 non-EDIT CETAF members 15 speakers Attendants

4. EDIT General Meeting Carvoeiro, 23-25 January 2008 The inventory of the living world is a cumbersome endeavour that requires a revision of traditional taxonomic practices Technological opportunities Conceptual challenges Taxonomic impediment: Progress in the study of biodiversity is hindered by a worldwide shortage of taxonomists coupled with a lack of enough funding for taxonomic study Biodiversity crisis Background

5. EDIT General Meeting Carvoeiro, 23-25 January 2008 Talks (technical opportunities) Rolf Beutel (University of Jena, Germany) Beetle tree of life: Confocal laser scanning microscopy for external features and low energy micro-computer tomography coupled with 3D reconstruction for internal features Few new informative characters but high resolution of previous ones coupled with fast processing of samples Matthew Collins (University of York, UK) Can DNA and RNA be extracted from ancient tissues? Most DNA disappears postmortem. Remaining DNA is affected by oxidation, hydrolization, and cross-linking. Yet, DNA may survive in hidden environments such as bone or hair. Modelling decay of DNA could be a useful tool for predicting the likelihood of successful PCR amplification from Museum collections

6. EDIT General Meeting Carvoeiro, 23-25 January 2008 Talks (technical opportunities) Manuel Morente (Cancer Research Center, Spain) Biobanks: repositories of specimens or tissue and DNA samples Beyond individuals (sharing): homogenous protocols for collection, handling and storage, quality controls, networking, Philippe Bouchet (MNHN, France) Panglao (Philipinnes) expedition (74 participants) demonstrates that collection can be scaled up and speeded up with sound results Establish distinction between participation, right to study, and collection ownership CBD and geopolitical challenges: recognized scientific versus commercial bioprospecting (Buffon declaration)

7. EDIT General Meeting Carvoeiro, 23-25 January 2008 Talks (technical opportunities) Jeroen Raes (EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany) 100 ongoing metagenomic projects Potential interest for taxonomic studies but require complex bioinformatic analyses Roderic Page (University of Glasgow, UK) Identifiers from different databases can be combined following the framework of CrossRef, which is used by publishers to integrate data and foster citations Substitute Copyright by Creative commons, which allows specific use of data

8. EDIT General Meeting Carvoeiro, 23-25 January 2008 Talks (technical opportunities) Olaf Bininda-Edmonds (University of Jena, Germany) Supermatrices and Supertrees can be now combined for analyzing large taxonomic groups Supertrees become not the final product of the analysis but are implemented within the search strategy to speed up phylogenetic analyses and gain accuracy. Miguel Alvarez (ROCHE, Spain) Pyroseqeuncing (GS-FLX automated sequencers) as a revolution in sequencing techniques Yet, too expensive and still need to be adapted to taxonomic studies.

9. EDIT General Meeting Carvoeiro, 23-25 January 2008 Talks (conceptual challenges) Ellinor Michel (ICZN, UK) Need of supporting Zoobank as an open-access register for animal scientific names Voluntary initially and mandatory in the long term. Does registration equals publication? Alain Dubois (MNHN, France) Rules for higher taxa Maintain the status quo on the code with small adjustments to the new times Taking into account the limited access to technologies in developing countries. Yet, many descriptions in Zootaxa are from developing countries

10. EDIT General Meeting Carvoeiro, 23-25 January 2008 Talks (conceptual challenges) Klauss Klass (Museum of Zoology, Dresden, Germany) Summary of the statements written by taxonomists on their view of taxonomy in their different countries Increasing networking and availability of new technologies as positive developments Declining of positions and budgets, of support to amateurs, and of taxonomic education at universities. Christopher Hauser (State Museum of Natural History, Stuttgart, Germany) Sustainable data generation as challenge for taxonomy: workflow, data standards (Darwin core, TDWG), management ATBI as pilot studies (Mercantour).

11. EDIT General Meeting Carvoeiro, 23-25 January 2008 Talks (conceptual challenges) Alfried Vogler (NHM, UK) DNA taxonomy as a tool for discovering and identifying new species Coalescence simulations support the concept Direct use in ATOL projects, surveys, species diversity and turnover Rudolph Meier (National University of Singapore, Singapore) Experiments to determine accuracy of Barcoding Success depends on the presence of singletons (good coverage) and large intra or small inter-specific divergences Usefulness as service for forensics, food determination, customes, etc

12. EDIT General Meeting Carvoeiro, 23-25 January 2008 Talks (conceptual challenges) Diana Lipscomb (George Washington University, USA) Bottom up approach (scientists are involved directly in the NSF) Variety of research programs in taxonomy PEET ATOL PBI RevSys Science-driven evaluation of projects and jobs (irrelevance of impact factors)

13. EDIT General Meeting Carvoeiro, 23-25 January 2008 Brainstorming (Future of taxonomy) Access to technologies Fast access to new technologies Wide access for routine taxonomic work (DNA sequencing, image analysis) for citizen scientists and taxonomists in ADCs Access to data Towards an open source use of taxonomic data Supporting common data structure platforms such as EoL, GBIF, Genbank Link to specimens (particularly types) Updating databases

14. EDIT General Meeting Carvoeiro, 23-25 January 2008 Brainstorming (Future of taxonomy) Nomenclature Maintain status quo (naming higher taxa needs consensus) EDIT should support voluntary registration in Zoobank Explore possibilities for free access to Zoological Record “naming” and individual identification of molecular taxonomic units Large scale discovery programmes Developing technologies for discovering and inventorying the “small world” (prokaryotes, single-cell eukaryotes and micro- metazoans) Large scale exploration programmes to discover 80% unknown world CBD impediment (Buffon declaration) Involvement of ADCs local taxonomist and Institutions

15. EDIT General Meeting Carvoeiro, 23-25 January 2008 Brainstorming (Taxonomy in society) Training Assess of the true number of taxonomical grants, PhDs awarded in Europe in the last years What do we want to train taxonomist for? Inventoring the planet, or… Evolutionary framework Promote in EDIT institutions the collaboration and training of citizen scientists (amateurs) Training local taxonomists in advanced developing countries (ADCs) Keeping professional taxonomists up to date

16. EDIT General Meeting Carvoeiro, 23-25 January 2008 Brainstorming (Taxonomy in society) Raise the profile of taxonomy As a science (scientific community, funding agencies) As a supporting service (stake-holders, general public)

17. EDIT General Meeting Carvoeiro, 23-25 January 2008 rafaz@mncn.csic.es i.ribera@mncn.csic.es