Yesterday I was invited to submit one of my photos to the Flickr pool on Systematic Botany. Yes, I know. The media ought to be alerted. But I point this out less to draw attention to my photographic prowess than to highlight the fact that there is in fact a Flickr pool on Systematic Botany, and that it is a lot of fun. Exploring the discussion forum led me to an old news item about staff at the National Museum Cardiff and Kew naming a whole bunch of new Sorbus species, and not from some isolated corner of the world either, but England and Wales.
Some of these trees have probably developed recently and are examples of on-going evolution of new species. Others are older types which have been known for some time but are only now described as ‘species’ thanks to modern DNA methods.
Some Sorbus species have economic uses, and the taxonomy is made horrendously complicated by rampant hybridization and apomixis.
Coincidentally, IIALD had a piece on a new scheme “supporting and promoting the development of persistent and openly accessible digital taxonomic literature.” I wonder whether making photographs of plants available through Flickr or some other image sharing site might contribute to this worthy cause.
Yes! For information, Encyclopedia of Life has a group on Flickr to enable its members providing photos that add information to the species pages: http://www.flickr.com/groups/encyclopedia_of_life/
Machine tags can be added while uploading so the photos. EoL indicates that you typically need only one of the taxonomy tags for EOL software to know where to put your image, ideally taxonomy:binomial =scientific names with two parts, i.e., genus and species with a space between them, enclose in quotes . You can add the geocoordinates to place the photo on map.
Here we were thinking about how the slow death of taxonomy as a discipline could be postponed if taxonomists would spin a business out of online species determination services, linked to a “citizen science” environmental monitoring scheme (taking pictures of flowers with you iPhone, so to say). Any thoughts?
Exactly. Bioblitz needs experts in taxonomy to identify species on photos. There are projects based on collecting data using social networks that are presently assessing the use of mobile devices, like cell phones or android phones with Google apps, e.g. Telabotanica for Mediterranean flora, Pl@ntNet for tropical countries, Lucid, etc. The last TDWG meeting in Montpellier held a full session about this.
For information: