Taxonomy of Orthoptera: An uncertain future

CIGLIANO, M. M.

Antalya, Turquia

Congreso; 10th International Congress of Orthopterology; 2009

The Orthopterists´Society

The global imperative for the conservation of biodiversity has brought into focus the needs for taxonomic research. However, the crisis facing the conservation of biodiversity is reflected in a parallel crisis in taxonomy. On the other hand, molecular information is having an increasingly important impact on the evidential basis for delimiting species and it is likely to result in greater scientific debate and controversy. Revisionary taxonomy is frequently dismissed as merely descriptive and lacking a hypothesis driven nature. Phylogenetic classifications are optimal for storing and predicting information, but phylogeny divorced from taxonomy is unrealizable. Taxonomy, systematics, and phylogeny are interwoven, hypothesis-driven sciences with a theoretical base. Taxonomic knowledge remains essential to credible biological research and is made urgent by the biodiversity crisis. An easy accessible taxonomic knowledge base is critical for all biodiversity-related sciences. Taxonomy, like academia in general, needs to prepare to take advantage of new information technology capabilities. Full synonymic and taxonomic information for the more than 24,000 valid species of Orthoptera, information at the specimen level data, images of type specimens and of specific diagnostic characters, and keys to several taxa are already available on the Web as part of the Orthoptera Species File online. The rapid advances in bioinformatics have provided unprecedented opportunities to conduct taxonomic research more efficiently; cybertaxonomy is emerging as an exciting new branch of taxonomy. The potential of using OSF as a tool for monograph and revisionary studies of Orthoptera is herein presented, as well as a way of integrating many of the most recent cybertaxonomic tools with species descriptions and demonstrating the utility of international standards for biodiversity informatics, in order to engage both the specialist taxonomic community and a wider public in gathering taxonomic knowledge and deepening understanding of it.