[Nhcoll-l] caveats (was Re: VEROs)

[Douglas Yanega]

Certain aspects of the discussion are a little beyond me, but other are 
not, so allow me to chime in:

On 8/13/21 9:21 AM, Samuel Bolton wrote:
> And by putting more 3D models of holotypes online from developed 
> countries, the specialists in megadiverse countries will be able to 
> compare their undescribed species with those holotypes. NFTs therefore 
> could solve a major impediment in taxonomy for megadiverse countries, 
> which is a lack of access to the vast majority of holotypes, many of 
> which have been effectively poached from megadiverse countries by the 
> most developed countries. I get more requests from Brazil to see my 
> specimens than the whole of the developed world. It would be nice if I 
> could provide them with a high-quality 3D model because loaning 
> holotypes is a risky business.

Since I manage a collection of over 4 million arthropods, and am also an 
ICZN Commissioner, the process of describing new arthropod species is 
among my interests.

There are at least two very serious issues that mitigate against the use 
of images as substitutes for physical specimens: (1) an increasing 
proportion of newly discovered and described taxa are morphologically 
cryptic, distinguishable from related taxa only by their DNA. Images of 
such species, no matter how good, will not help taxonomists; people 
describing new taxa in that group won't benefit from access to images, 
nor - in plain fact - will they benefit from traditional loans of types. 
Much of taxonomy is moving away from species delimitation based on 
externally visible characters, so the underlying premise is itself 
diminishing in relevance. Only groups that CAN'T use DNA (e.g. 
palaeontologists) are immune to this. (2) producing 3D images is not 
cheap or simple, nor is it guaranteed to produce images *useful* to an 
expert, EVEN IF external morphology is a viable diagnostic feature. For 
example, almost any group of organisms that is traditionally stored in 
liquid or on microscope slides is pretty certainly going to be 
unsuitable for application of 3D imaging, if only because most of the 
legacy specimens that one will need to use for synoptic comparison are 
going to be difficult or impossible to work with in this fashion 
(sometimes often grossly distorted in shape as well). Imagine that you 
want to compare several hundred unidentified specimens on slides to a 
holotype that is ALSO on a slide. Even if you are somehow able to 
generate 3D images of that type, it is actually not going to be truly 
helpful for what you need to do, because it's not genuinely *comparable* 
to the material you need to ID.

A minor cautionary tale: starting about 20 or so years ago, we and a 
number of other collections that had begun to get swamped by bulk 
samples in ethanol, generated by things like malaise traps and berlese 
funnels, etc., found that various critical point drying techniques could 
give us VERY nice specimens that we could keep dry, on points, of taxa 
normally stored in ethanol or on slides. It seemed like something that 
could revolutionize taxonomy for those groups. When I showed 
point-mounted thrips, perfectly preserved, to one of the world's leading 
thrips experts, he sighed and informed me that the specimens were 
useless to him or anyone else, and could not be identified, until and 
unless they were cleared and put on slides. Our local spider expert did 
almost the exact same thing when confronted with point-mounted 
theridiids and salticids, saying that the species-level diagnostic 
features *couldn't be seen at all* in dry specimens. There were similar 
reactions to dried collembolans, aphids, etc. - basically, specimens 
that were *not directly comparable* to the existing reference material 
were nearly worthless.

I won't deny that I have often longed for nice 3D images of insects, but 
I've come to recognize that such images will probably NEVER be a major 
tool for the practice of taxonomy, no matter how good they are, or how 
cheaply they can be produced. For people managing a display-oriented 
natural history collection, however, they could be a FANTASTIC 
educational and aesthetic leap; so much biodiversity is too small to 
appreciate with the naked eye, but if you could make a working hologram 
of, say, a peacock mite, so it looks like it's 2 feet long, you can blow 
people away.

> I'm still unsettled by moves to monetize specimens, even 3D models of 
> them, but I appreciate you taking the time to address my concerns so 
> thoroughly. It could be because I come from a vertebrate paleontology 
> background, where the monetization of beautiful or rare fossils has 
> resulted in potentially scientifically important specimens 
> disappearing into private collections and has muddied the ethics of 
> collecting. Maybe other lessons could come from that field as museums 
> do sell casts of their specimens, and I'm not sure how that 
> complicates things when private collectors donate specimens. 
> Regardless, I do hope that lawyers and ethicists - perhaps even 
> economists? - are consulted if the natural history collections 
> community wants to explore this funding option.
>
> In response to your last paragraph, I would point out that all of the 
> benefits of VEROs that you list are actually just benefits of 3D 
> digitization of specimens, so those benefits could and do occur when 
> funding is available without any of the complications that trading in 
> NFTs may introduce. If VEROs do take off, I think that if local 
> scientists from low GDP countries do not have the appropriate 
> expertise to describe holotype species, which is a premise that I 
> don't necessarily accept, then any profit from VEROs should go towards 
> funding their training and the support of their collections, not 
> towards digitizing more specimens so that scientists from wealthier 
> countries can continue to build their careers on the biodiversity and 
> work of collectors in low GDP countries.

I've given talks at international conferences about monetization of 
taxonomy, in the context of the selling or auctioning of "species naming 
rights". Most of the very significant caveats that apply in that context 
are universal, however, and *very* worrisome. Basically, if ANY part of 
the taxonomic enterprise is perceived as a source of significant 
revenue, then there will be pressure to *preferentially* exploit it, and 
this may happen even if the long-term consequences destroy the entire 
enterprise ("killing the golden goose"). Right now, with few exceptions, 
one institution can just put a box of specimens in the mail to another 
institution, nearly anywhere in the world, for little more than the cost 
of postage, and no one bats an eye, including our administrators, even 
if it involves thousands of specimens or potentially new species. We 
collectively function as a community, for the most part, to everyone's 
mutual benefit. ANY pressure to monetize this work threatens that 
collaborative status quo, because it *will* foster increased 
competition. Yes, there is already some of this going on, and the system 
isn't perfect, but it's more than just a slippery slope; we're 
approaching the edge of a deep, dark pit, and we really need to be alert 
to the peril. Even things promoted with the best intentions, like the 
Nagoya Protocol, can have devastating consequences if taken to an extreme.

Sincerely,

-- 
Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314     skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
              https://faculty.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82

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