Systematics & Paleo.

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I just finished reading a review of a new systematics textbook in which the
author (once again) lamented the sorry state of systematics training within
most university's undergraduate biology curricula. Although the review
seemed for the most part to focus at the lack of training in systematics
and evolution within molecular biological programs, I couldn't help but
wonder if many of the same criticisms applied to paleontology, and for many
of the same reasons. Like molecular biology (or ecology, or behavioral
biology, or any number of subdisciplines) university-level paleontological
education requires that a vast amount of material from diverse sources be
transmitted to the students (or, in Jane Smiley's more up-to-date lexicon,
...to the customers) in a limited amount of time. Given paleontology's
inherently interdisciplinary nature this means that compromises inevitably
have to be made. Yet, the outcome of almost any paleontological study is
highly dependent on the quality of the systematics. Because systematics is
so crucial to our science I oftentimes worry that in our rush to present
paleontology in all its many guises, we end up short-changing the basis of
our science. Perhaps even worse, we may be giving students the, at best
misleading, at worst patently false, impression that systematics is the
rather dull and unimaginative side of paleontology whereas the more data
integrative fields of "macroevolution," or "molecular paleontology," or
"evolutionary rates" etc., etc., etc., are really where it's at.

Please don't think that I am suggesting that we all drop whatever research
along these lines we are doing, grab the nearest specimen and begin sorting
out the tangled skein of alternate species concepts that most likely
surrounds it. However, the author of the review is correct. Systematics
seems to get scant respect (and even less research money) these days and to
my way of thinking that's a BIG problem. Our message about the importance
of systematics just doesn't seem to be getting across. Therefore, the
question is what, if anything, we can do about it? For those of you who are
teachers at any level, how do you make your students understand the
importance of systematics to your students? What works? :-) What doesn't
work? :-( For those of you who serve on the review panels of granting
bodies, why is there this perception that it's not even worth the effort to
put together a systematics proposal these days? Is this really true? If it
is true, why? If not, what is responsible for that perception? What
proposal strategies seem to work? And finally, as a field do we really have
a commitment to systematics as an indivisible part of all paleontology? Or,
is systematics currently regarded (for better or for worse) as just one of
a number of different paleontological specialties that are all of equal
value to the profession?


Norm MacLeod



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Norman MacLeod
Senior Scientific Officer
N.MacLeod@nhm.ac.uk (Internet)
N.MacLeod@uk.ac.nhm (Janet)

Address: Dept. of Palaeontology, The Natural History Museum,
         Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD

Office Phone: 071-938-9006
Dept. FAX:  071-938-9277
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