In defence of taxonomic governance
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FORUM PAPER
In defence of taxonomic governance Stijn Conix 1 Received: 9 August 2018 / Accepted: 30 January 2019 # Gesellschaft für Biologische Systematik 2019
Abstract It is well known that taxonomists rely on many different methods and criteria for species delimitation, leading to different kinds of groups being recognised as species. While this state of relative disorder is widely acknowledged, there is no similar agreement about how it should be resolved. This paper considers the view that the disorder in species classification should be resolved by a system of taxonomic governance. I argue that such a system of governance is best seen as a combination of standardisation, unification and regulation, each of which can be implemented in different forms. I investigate the forms that these three components should take for taxonomic governance by looking into two successfully governed classification systems, namely, virus classification and enzyme classification. The last part of the paper then defends the governance view against five objections. Keywords Taxonomic disorder . Governance . Standardisation . Unification . Regulation . Species classification . Species problem
Introduction: taxonomic anarchy In a recent comment in Nature, Garnett and Christidis (2017, p. 25) write that taxonomy is in a state of ‘anarchy’. Their controversial note is only the most recent in a long series of similar opinion papers over the past decades (e.g. Crisp and Fogg 1988; Godfray 2002; Isaac et al. 2004; Mallet and Willmott 2003). At first sight, these accusations might strike one as surprising. After years of intensive debate about the definition of the species category, taxonomists are converging on the consensus that species are independently evolving lineages (De Queiroz 2007; Mayden 1997). Moreover, over the past two decades, taxonomy has witnessed an incredible increase in available data and sophisticated methods to delimit species taxa (Camargo and Sites 2013; Sites and Marshall 2004). Ironically, however, these two unmistakable signs of progress in taxonomy have contributed to the alleged anarchy in the resulting species classification. While there is consensus about defining species abstractly as independently evolving lineages, there is no similar consensus about how evolutionary independence should be operationalised to identify species taxa. As a result, different taxonomists rely on different data * Stijn Conix [email protected] 1
Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science, KU Leuven, Vesaliusstraat 2, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
types and methods of analysis, often leading to competing results for the same organisms and causing different kinds of groups to be recognised as species. In the remainder of this paper, I will refer to this situation as one of ‘taxonomic disorder’. Given the negative connotation of ‘disorder’, it should be emphasised that this situation does not constitute a failure of taxonomy. Instead, it is the inevitable consequence of the complexity of the organic world and the evolutionary processe
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