Life Sciences Commons^™

Pushing Taxonomy To Extiction?, Alessandro Minelli, Annemarie Ohler, Erna Aescht, Aaron Bauer, Lucio Bonato, Roger Bour, Marcelo Rodrigues De Carvalho, Rafael O. De Sá, Et Al.

Biology Faculty Publications

Can we describe all species on Earth before they disappear? We argue that this is possible only by endowing taxonomy with professional manpower and appropriate material resources as required by big science.

Contrary to Costello et al.’s (CMS) (1) statements, taxonomy is not an easy discipline accessible to all through a smartphone. It requires exhaustive training and long familiarity with field, specimens and literature (2).

CMS’s argument is framed in terms of species numbers, but different, non-overlapping species concepts apply to bacteria, brambles and birds (3,4,5): “the species” as common unit of biodiversity does not exist (6).

Even ignoring this …

The Amphibian Tree Of Life, Darrel R. Frost, Taran Grant, Julián Faivovich, Raoul H. Bain, Alexander Haas, Célio F.B. Haddad, Rafael O. De Sá

Biology Faculty Publications

The evidentiary basis of the currently accepted classification of living amphibians is discussed and shown not to warrant the degree of authority conferred on it by use and tradition. A new taxonomy of living amphibians is proposed to correct the deficiencies of the old one. This new taxonomy is based on the largest phylogenetic analysis of living Amphibia so far accomplished. We combined the comparative anatomical character evidence of Haas (2003) with DNA sequences from the mitochondrial transcription unit H1 (12S and 16S ribosomal RNA and tRNAValine genes, ø 2,400 bp of mitochondrial sequences) and the nuclear genes histone H3, …