Do not forget that in this world there are both good, gray and bad people around, not excluding taxonomists. The battle to be the 1st to describe new species is fierce since it is tied to the taxonomist's fame and job position. No [or only a few exceptional] taxonomist like having other taxonomists learning of a new fish or other organism's existance and stealing their works [often by describing that new stuff with vague characters or based on very few comparision with other related species or the description is in itself not useful for understanding the big picture or downright wrong]. This act had been commited many times already. For example, the coral red pencil fish was worked in depth by someone in US and some European guys rushed to describe it as a subspecies of Nanostomus marginatus [in honor of fish importer/exporter's name], which is clearly different both in morphology, size, and behavior [they might get a clue from the US guys mentioning that the coral red pencilfish may be related to N. marginatus earlier...]. Anyway after quite a few "talk" the coral red pencil is raised to species status like it should be. Before accusing the taxonomist for his/her jealousy, please do not forget that he/she work for a living too. If they try to write a good description, albeit slow, please give them chance and time to do the good job. We do not need another 100 new fishes that is hard to separate from other related species resulting from quick and incomplete jobs... By confusion these new bad descriptions created do you think you can rely on them for making conservation plans?
brookloach [18/12/2545]
ความคิดเห็นที่: 8
About what should be written and what's not: do not forget there are lots of people viewing our web site. Some are good conservationists, some may be greedy animal trader. I still believe that something are better not to let people know unless you are sure the info would never be used for evil means [like Khun Knotsnake's fear of greedy traders going after rare expensive snakes if habitat info are released].