Sarah Kemmitt and colleagues at the British Library have just released a podcast of Rod Page's recent talk ‘What’s in a name? – Taxonomy in crisis’. This is part of the libraries excellent TalkScience series. The podcast is limited to Rod's initial presentation, but most of the action took place in the discussion that followed, and in the pub afterwards. I was a little disappointed that the taxonomic luminaries in the audience couldn't muster a stronger defense of taxonomy. A recurring theme of the discussion was the 'post-taxonomist' era, and how we approach the challenges of taxonomy and systematics in a period when there are no more professionals. Such was the air of inevitability about this period that no one in the audience even challenged this vision. Indeed, for many taxonomic groups this is not a vision of our future but a reflection of the present. For an increasing number of taxa there simply are no taxonomists providing professional-level coverage, and I know institutions like the Natural History Museum have to think very strategically about how to fill posts vacated by retiring taxonomists. I don’t hear too many complaints from the wider scientific community about the lack of professional taxonomists. However, because taxonomy is a ‘long-tail’ science (i.e. the half life of taxonomic citations are measured in decades, sometime centuries, and this is just the taxonomic information that is formally cited!), I would not expect the volume of complaints to become audible to the people that might do something about them (i.e. the funders) until it is far too late.

All this discussion led me to think more personally about my relationship with the non-professional taxonomic community and my role in better mustering their efforts. The dearth of funding for taxonomic content (i.e. doing taxonomy) means that I simply cannot justify traditional taxonomy to the museum administrators, except for highly charismatic taxa, or where my taxonomy is a clear means to an end, rather than an end in itself. I am in the happy position that my research program is reasonably diversified and that much of this work (e.g. infrastructure projects like the Scratchpads, or work on the Galapagos mockingbird lice) meets these criteria. But I am also conscious of the fact that many of my colleagues are not in this happy position, and that I can no longer even serve my taxonomic community (people working on the evolution of parasitic lice - Phthiraptera) to the same level that I use to. Clearly the best use of my time now is in mustering the wider communities efforts (especially the 'pro-amateur community', who work to a professional standard but are unpaid for their work). If anything Rod's talk and the discussion that followed made me more convinced about my personal strategy for dealing with the ‘post-taxonomist’ era, but this discussion does not leave me happy that it should have come to this.

Topics Covered in Rod's discussion included:
• Why does taxonomy matter?
• Why are taxonomists unhappy, and is it partly their own fault?
• We don't know how many species remain undescribed but does this matter?
• Cybertaxonomy and the ‘dance of the initiatives’ – is more money the answer?
• Mickey Mouse and taxonomy – how do we deal with copyright and other obstacles to sharing data?
• Who would want to be a taxonomist in the 21st century?

To continue the discussion on these issues, take a look at the Taxonomy forum on Nature Network.

For archival reasons I have kept a copy of Rod's podcast, which can be accessed here.