Olinguito, Scala naturae, and Anthropocentric Media

It's not every day that a new carnivore is discovered.  Thus, the announcement of the Olinguito, Bassaricyon neblina, from cloud forests in Ecuador and Colombia is legitimately exciting news.  In fact, it is the first new carnivore from the Americas in 35 years!   Interestingly, specimens existed in museum collections and were even on display as living specimens in zoological parks yet its significance as a distinct kind of procyonid had not been recognized until now.  Details of the find can be found on the Smithsonian site, http://newsdesk.si.edu/releases/smithsonian-scientists-discover-new-species-carnivore, the proud institutional parent of this taxonomic triumph.  The background stories implied in this discovery are as fascinating as the cute animal itself.  That our museums contain un-described species of insects and plants is generally known, but finding a new species of carnivore sitting on a shelf drives the point home.  The intrepid search to locate them living in the wild is a testament to scientific fortitude.

Without detracting from the scientific significance of this find — and this truly is headline material by any reasonable standard — and perhaps indulging my sensibilities as an entomologist I could not help but notice the difference in enthusiasm and level of coverage by broadcast and Web media outlets.  I am of course delighted by the coverage.  What eludes me is the lack of coverage for most of the other 18,000 (more or less) newly discovered species in an average year.  Mind you, I am taking notes.  Just as celebrity names for species has enabled colleagues and I to shamelessly seek public awareness of taxonomy, natural history museums, and the biodiversity crisis, the public interest in warm, cuddly, and furry does not go unnoticed.  But why are our closer relatives so much more eagerly embraced by journalists?  Many recent plant, fungi, and insect discoveries are equally or more scientifically amazing and not infrequently involve species so unlike any ever seen in our world that they demand whole new genera or families or even phyla to be erected.  The Olinguito, as cool and cute as it is, by contrast is so similar to related species that it had not been distinguished until now.

The announcement of the Olinguito happened to arrive not long after my friend and colleague, Professor Alessandro Minelli of the University of Padova, sent me a reprint of a recent publication by he and Emanuele Rigato entitled "The great chain of being is still here," printed in the open access Evolution:  Education and Outreach (http://www.evolution-outreach.com/content/6/1/18).   They document that the idea of a Scala naturae is alive and well among professional biologists based on a detailed survey of top scientific journals.  The Scala naturae sees species as progressing from "lower" to "higher" forms, culminating with Mankind as the pinnacle of evolution.  This concept of a ladder with humans on the top rung is outdated, replaced by the phylogenetic view that all living species occupy equally tips of branches on cladograms.  I wonder, to what extent are journalists mired in the outmoded notion of a progressive ladder of evolution if biologists continue to fall into the trap?  I am no doubt over analyzing this.  After all, it may be decades before we find another carnivore species in the Americas if ever so we should indeed be celebrating this fantastic finding.

On the other hand, our failure in the 150 years since Darwin to educate the public to understand the basics of evolution must be corrected.  This public science education challenge must be met.  Not only are the needs and priorities for biodiversity exploration undercut when the voting public does not understand what is at stake, we are depriving millions of people the intellectual pleasures of contemplating the great diversification of life on planet earth of which they are a part.  As if to drive home this crying need for evolution education, an anchor on CNN this morning asked a guest whether the Olinguito arose through the interbreeding of two other species.  Small wonder a pretty picture gets top billing.

Pictures: Chile Volcano Plume Explodes With Lightning

Pictures: Chile Volcano Plume Explodes With Lightning

This photograph of Chile's Puyehue volcano, created by a minutes-long exposure, in capturing multiple lighting bolts in one image as though they had all occurred in a single instant, creates a metaphor for revisionary taxonomy.  Because in a single generic revision we can study and compare complex derived characters that evolved over the course of hundreds of independent character transformations, driven by an indeterminate number of selection factors, we see in one grand image the whole multi-million-year history of a clade that would otherwise be visible only to an immortal.  The grandeur in this taxonomic view of life is as spectacular, inspiring and shocking as this fantastic photo.

Source: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/06/pictures/110606-chile-volcano-lightning-science-ash-eruption/

What on Earth?

And from the IISE's Department of Shameless Self Promotion, Sara Pennak and I have our new book What on Earth? 100 of Our Planet's Most Amazing New Species being released on April 30th.  Published by the Penguin Group under the Plume imprint, the book features 100 species discovered over the past ten years that are for one reason or another surprising, unexpected, or entertaining.

Here is an overview from the Penguin site:

Summary of What on Earth?

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A chameleon so tiny it can fit on your thumbnail? A spider named after David Bowie? A fungus that turns ants into zombies? What on Earth? What on Earth? is a compendium of the 100 coolest, weirdest, and most intriguing new species of this century as determined by the International Institute for Species Exploration. From animals to plants, fossils to bacteria, What on Earth? is an accessible, informative, and offbeat look at the creatures that also call our planet home, including: • A dangerous cobra that can spit its venom almost ten feet • A miniscule orchid that is less than a half-inch wide • A rainforest mushroom named after the cartoon character Spongebob Squarepants • A beautiful seahorse that changes colors to protect itself from predators • A stick insect that is as long as a man’s arm Featuring visually striking images alongside surprising facts about each new species, What on Earth? is a testament to the incredible and ever-evolving diversity of our planet.

The book is available for advanced orders through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other booksellers in the U.S. and overseas.

Essays at the beginning of each chapter introduce readers to various aspects of species exploration and each species includes beautiful (or, in some cases ugly) photographs along with natural history anecdotes.  The book, like the IISE's annual Top 10 New Species list (which, by the way, is coming on or near Linnaeus' birthday on May 23rd), is intended to make the public aware of the biodiversity crisis, the steady progress being made discovering and describing earth's species, and the special roles played by taxonomists, natural history museums, and botanical gardens in expanding our knowledge of the occupants of the biosphere.

WHAT'S THE POINT?
Why Leonardo's Mona Lisa overshadows the more captivating Genevra de'Benci escapes me, but that is an argument for another day.  I find something about Genevra speaks to me about the quiet, contemplative condition of being human and that she, lacking most of the physical traits I would normally associate with beauty, is one of the most beautiful women ever put to canvas.  When I was living in Washington, DC, I would sometimes steal off to the National Gallery on a lunch hour just to spend a few minutes with her, to marvel at Leonardo's technical abilities, yes, such as the reflection of light on each fine strand of her hair, but moreover, at the emotional connection that he was making with me across five centuries.

It is plausible that we could use isotope-ratio mass spec or other analyses to analyze the pigments in Leonardo's paints and uniquely identify these two works of art, but if that is all we knew of them, if we had not observed in careful detail and with deliberate attention the subtleties that make each unique, then what would we have achieved?  Some practical things, perhaps, such as insurance against frauds and a rapid, objective way to say from which painting a small scraping of paint had come, but this robs us of so, so much.  As important and impressively powerful as modern chemistry is, there is a human need in the world for art history, too.

DNA barcoding and phylogenetics are (at least for the sake of argument, as I have reservations) simple, cost-effective, objective, and require little knowledge of morphology of the organisms involved.  Even if they allow us to identify species and to say the relative sequence of their origins in phylogenetic history, so what?  Those are merely tools for applied work that tell us very little that we actually want or need to know about the organisms.  The only reason to want to identify a species is so that we can access its properties for what it can teach us about anatomy, adaptation, selection, behavior, evolution, character transmutation, biogeography, or something similarly more complex, unique, and interesting.  And the only reason to want a phylogeny is to help interpret, explain, and understand the origin and relationships among shared-derived evolutionary novelties.  Unless we have done the hard scholarly work of developing and corroborating theories about what the complex and subtle characters are that make each species unique, there is really nothing of much interest to be explained or to be contemplated once a cladogram is reconstructed.

As we set out to explore and document that vast majority of species on earth not yet known to us, it would be wise to ask ourselves "What is the point?"  If we only want an estimate of the number of living species, DNA-dominant systematics may be the most cost effective choice.  But I cannot imagine a more trivial pursuit.  Each species is for its own unique and improbable combination of characters truly a grand work of art.  As we fund finding chemical signatures to identify these works of selection, let's remember to fund some art history too.  It will make the exploration of biodiversity ever so much more interesting and of sufficient value to continue.

ETYMOLOGY OF ENTOMOLOGY
BBC BROADCAST


Tune into BBC Radio 4 on Saturday, March 9th, at 10:30 AM GMT as Dr. George McGavin hosts an tour of some the unusual and odd scientific names given to insect species.  I was interviewed for the program but have not heard the few minutes that may have survived the cutting room floor or any of the bulk of the program.  I am just delighted to see zoological nomenclature get some overdue attention.  Praises of the fantastic work of thousands of taxonomic zoologists, of the dedicated staff of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN), and of the funding stewardship of the International Trust for Zoological Nomenclature (ITZN) are rarely sung.  Zoological nomenclature gives us a precise language with which to talk about literally millions of species, binominal unique identifiers for those species with which modern databases can be organized, and, thanks to the Linnaean tradition, a system of names that is sufficiently flexible to adapt to unanticipated growth in knowledge of phylogeny.  It would be easy to curl into a fetal ball and weep over the loss of species during the ongoing biodiversity crisis.  One thing that keeps taxonomists going is a sense of humor.  This sometimes seeps through the nomenclatural process and other times explodes through.  Whether subtle or in your face, humorous or ironic, dark or light hearted, zoologists have and continue to come up with names that simultaneously fulfill the requirements of the Code and science to give unto each species a unique name and allow a bit of individual personality to shine show, too.  Taxonomists have a particularly intimate relationship with the species they discover and it is fitting that species and their names reside at the interface of science and humanity.  I look forward to hearing the program and unless I am surprised by some diversion from the typical excellence of BBC and of Radio 4's producers, it should be worth the wait.  More information can be found at: 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01r4xw5.

 MORPHOLOGY STILL KICKING

Much of the literature over the past couple of decades could give the reader the impression that whenever conflict exists in cladistic patterns indicated by DNA and morphology, DNA is to be assumed correct.  After all, morphology is so complicated, variable, subjective, and old-fashioned.  And it requires learning so many polysyllabic Classic-rooted terms, comparing hundreds or thousands of specimens, often making pain-staking dissections or preparations, and thinking... oh, so much thinking.  Afterall, as Platnick's classic 1979 "transformation" paper detailed morphological data, unlike DNA, cannot simply be described (as A, C, T, or G) but requires formulation of explicit and falsifiable hypotheses about homology and polarity.  Complexity, as it turns out, is the stuff of historical signal:  the more complex the structure the more stringently Occam's razor and Dollo's principle apply.  Simple = little or no historical information content.  The greater the complexity of the charcter, the greater the potential for cladistic signal.  Carefully developed concepts of characters have the curious property of lacking variation (they are classic examples of Popper's all-or-nothing claims about the world) and the notorious variation in morphology actually results from a confusion between informative systematic characters and infra-specific (or intra-clade) traits.  Failure to think deeply and carefully assess informative vs uninformative or to loose sight of the distinction between info relevant to population genetics rather than taxonomy results in bewildering variation.  No kidding.  Morphological characters are no more subjective than assumptions about various models and rates of molecular change.  And as for old, don't get me started.  Morphology and the DNA coding it are — ready?  drum roll, please — the same age.  And if old just means morphology has been studied longer, then it is all for the good.  Thinking about complicated and interesting questions for a long time is and will always remain advisable.

Enough rant.  If you have not yet seen Gauthier et al's paper (title page above) or the discussion of it by Losos et al. in 12 December 2012 issue of Science (p. 1428) run, don't walk, to your library (or online subscription).  I was excited by Gary Nelson's chapter in Milestones in Systematics in 2004 (edited by David Williams and Peter Forey) on the arrested development of cladistics in part because it called for returned focus on individual characters rather than an unhealthy, disproportionate focus on "tree" construction.  If Dr. Nelson's paper was the shot heard 'round the world to reawaken a revolution begun by Hennig, then Gauthier et al.'s paper may be the first full-scale engagement in a long-overdue battle to recall why we studied phylogeny to begin with.  It was and is to understand the origin and evolution of all the complex and wonderfully improbable evolutionary novelties that make biodiversity, well, diverse.  Unless we study the complex characters of morphology (and behavior and developmental genetics and...) themselves, then we lose sight of what is most interesting about pursuing cladograms, and we deprive ourselves of many of the most intellectually challenging and gratifying aspects of comparative biology.  And considering that 10,000,000 of an estimated 12,000,000 living species of plants and animals with complex morphologies (apologies to microbes with fascinating complex characters, of which there are many) remain unknown to science, a return to exploring the Cosmos of anatomical diversity is essential if we are to progress beyond arguing over cladograms for the fraction of already known homologies and species.  Given recent advances in digitization and a potential on the horizon for comparing any specimen from any museum side-by-side at any time, the number of morphological apomorphies about to be discovered will be mind-boggling.  Morphologists are on the threshold of waging shock-and-awe warfare as details of the evolution of life on earth is revealed.  Lock and load.

Public/Science Dual Purposed Exhibit

During a recent visit to the Museum fur Naturkunde in Berlin I was really impressed by a beautiful example of science/public dual usage of an exhibit.  You hear lots of rhetoric about sharing "behind the scenes" research collections with the public but few go beyond creation of a fishbowl with a window on staff preparing fossils or pressing plants.  Such peeks at science as it happens is a great idea, but the reason people should get off the sofa and visit a natural history museum is the see the real thing, to be in the presence of actual specimens that are old, rare, unique, historically or otherwise significant.

The Berlin specimen of Archaeopteryx is fantastically housed and displayed.  It is in a small room that adds to the inescapable sense that you are seeing something truly special.  Crowds wait their turn to step into the small, dimly lit room where the specimen is on display.  The obvious comparison is the chaos in the Louvre as people nudge their way close enough to the Mona Lisa to see her.

The Archaeopteryx is behind bullet proof glass like the U. S. Constitution in Washington, DC, providing exceptional security yet allowing the public to be close enough to examine the impression in detail.  When a scientist visits Berlin to study the specimen the room is secured by a closing door with the scientist inside and then the case opens to allow access to the fossil.  This is a brilliantly designed and constructed exhibit that through its architectural gravitas conveys to the public that this is an exceptionally valuable specimen.  This use of technology to allow the public to be so close to this paleontological treasure while it is not being studied by visiting scientists, yet enable direct access by scientists as needed, is a model that should be carefully studied and adapted to share other rare research specimens with an appreciative and curious public.