Esta semana vi la defensa de las tesis doctorales de dos chicos aquí de Tucumán. Guillermo Suarez que trabaja con musgos, y pues mostró un enorme trabajo sobre musgos. Es tremendo lo que hay que hacer para poder sacar caracteres morfológicos en plantas! Además, pues un excelente trabajo de taxonomía y filogenética combinado :). También se presento Sebastian Barrionuevo, el trabaja con unas ranas especialmente acuáticas, muchas de ellas viven en grandes alturas, por lo que es muy complicado muestrearlas. Una excelente labor de morfología, y de unión de la filogenia con otros campos, como la ontogenía y de alguna manera la ecología.
También se presentaba Santiago Catalano en BsAs, pero pues no me pude comunicar con el, además de que estaba muy cansado, pues fue al otro día del toque de Radiohead (me hubiera quedado dormido! xP). Y también supe de un chico, Ignacio Escapa, de Trelew (muuuy lejos xD) que presento uno de los posters que más me gusto en el meeting de la Willi Hennig.
Tanto Santí como Sebastian ganaron premios en el meeting ;).
Esperemos que cada día sea mayor la cantidad de gente que trabaja en cladística :D, y que el interes por la morfología siga siendo un área fuerte!
lunes, marzo 30, 2009
sábado, marzo 21, 2009
Just some links
There are some nice things on line lately :).
First, Rod Page talk at NHM of London, he puts his slide-show on line, there is also a video and a pod-cast of the talk (I do not see them :P). The slide-show can give a nice idea about the talk. There are two important things on the talk: (a) the importance of the availability of data! I just agree with him: data must be freely available, and previously published data must be easy accessible; and (b) Scientific data must be readily usable, for example the “Encyclopedia of life” is just a fun site just like wikipedia or the web tree of life, they are full of nice pics and info, but cientifically irrelevant: no hard data are attached to it (i.e. morfological info, character matrices), this contrast with the most simpler ispaces of Page!
Although I do not like some of the comments, Malte Ebach made a good point against the revival of a “pragmatic” classification (for horticulture, for example). I think that the only rule of classification is the phylogeny. If an immutable classification is the objective, the only way I can thing is an “alphabetic” or “numeric” system, but the preservation of “traditional” names is not the solution. Maybe, it is better a change of the rules...
And speaking of change of the rules, I recommend the continuos checking of several of Mike Keesey posts. I do not think that phylocode is the solution (in fact I think that it is even worse than traditional Linnean classification), but he writes interesting things about databasing!
Also, it is seems to change some rules about the publication of names for taxonomy (via Evolving thoughts). I thing that only peer reviewed publication must count, at least from the last fifty years or so. Also I thing that new names, at least for species must be published on journals instead of books...
First, Rod Page talk at NHM of London, he puts his slide-show on line, there is also a video and a pod-cast of the talk (I do not see them :P). The slide-show can give a nice idea about the talk. There are two important things on the talk: (a) the importance of the availability of data! I just agree with him: data must be freely available, and previously published data must be easy accessible; and (b) Scientific data must be readily usable, for example the “Encyclopedia of life” is just a fun site just like wikipedia or the web tree of life, they are full of nice pics and info, but cientifically irrelevant: no hard data are attached to it (i.e. morfological info, character matrices), this contrast with the most simpler ispaces of Page!
Although I do not like some of the comments, Malte Ebach made a good point against the revival of a “pragmatic” classification (for horticulture, for example). I think that the only rule of classification is the phylogeny. If an immutable classification is the objective, the only way I can thing is an “alphabetic” or “numeric” system, but the preservation of “traditional” names is not the solution. Maybe, it is better a change of the rules...
And speaking of change of the rules, I recommend the continuos checking of several of Mike Keesey posts. I do not think that phylocode is the solution (in fact I think that it is even worse than traditional Linnean classification), but he writes interesting things about databasing!
Also, it is seems to change some rules about the publication of names for taxonomy (via Evolving thoughts). I thing that only peer reviewed publication must count, at least from the last fifty years or so. Also I thing that new names, at least for species must be published on journals instead of books...
Suscribirse a:
Entradas (Atom)
