Steve Rosenthal also makes a good point. I just checked the acknowledgment list for my current project. It includes more than 30 amateurs who provided shells, preserved specimens, photos for publication, and important information.
Alan
Alan
On Wed, 2 May 2012, steve rosenthal wrote:
> also, another example where specimens or data collected/contributed by
> amateurs as well as professionals proved useful in ways that were hard
> to foresee at the time of collection...
>
> On 5/2/12, Alan Kohn <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> It's very pertinent!! To err is human... We all make mistakes. But this
>> study demonstrates a great advantage of the scientific method: It is
>> self-correcting.
>>
>> Here's a molluscan example involving a glaring error we (myself and Tom
>> Duda) made in a 2005 publication (Molecular Phylogentics and Evolution, 34:
>> 257-272). We had the taxonomy correct, but not the phylogenetic
>> relationship. We still don't really know what went wrong but our results
>> showed that Conus furvus and C. litteratus are very closely related species
>> on the phylogenetic tree. It didn't take very long for Espino et al. (The
>> Nautilus, 122:143-150, 2008) to convince us, with a combination of
>> molecular
>> and behavioral data, that this is quite erroneous and that C. furvus is
>> much
>> more closely related to the other molluscivorous species than to the
>> worm-eating C. litteratus.
>>
>> For both skinks and snails, we at least have a better chance of protecting
>> what we know is there than what we don't know is there.
>>
>> Alan
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "John Wolff" <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>> Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2012 11:44 AM
>> Subject: [CONCH-L] OT - Skink taxonomy
>>
>>
>>> Off topic, but pertinent anyhow.
>>>
>>> John
>>> Lancaster, PA
>>>
>>> http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/02/a-taxonomic-error-reversed-decades-too-late/?src=rechp
>>>
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