standardization of environmental data and information - International ...

shallow water, where nematodes were often used for monitoring. Those
factors changed unpredictably with all sorts of ecological factors and
disturbances. When pollutants were introduced, sometimes the abundance
went up and sometimes it went down. Bruce Coull, in a comprehensive
paper on this topic that analysed other papers 28 , had concluded that
abundance and biomass were useless.
Various parameters influencing nematode size structure might be
useful for monitoring. Information on species richness and distribution
would be needed to ask questions about extinction. Ecological diversity
indices could be calculated and analysed in the usual ways, but this was an
expensive task that took a long time and required expertise that existed in
very few places in the world. How could he recommend a method that, if
enough people picked it up, could not be done anyway because there was
no one to do it? Moreover, the expertise was not increasing.
Urging standardisation of sampling and extraction, he said that,
although the techniques were known, 95% of all commercial monitoring
data produced for legal reasons was worthless. Extraction was done by
hand; people had to be taught how to do it. It was easy to teach as a
technical skill but if it was not done right, the data would be useless. If the
wrong sampling gear were used, the data would be useless. A few years
ago, he and some colleagues who had been analysing data for ecological
effects had not found the effect they expected. When the sample extraction
was done by two highly reputable research institutes with good people, he
had been able to tell from the results which labs had done the analysis.
The point was that, if the data were to be at all useful, they had to be
comparable.
Taxonomy and voucher collections
For taxonomy, and especially for nematode taxonomy, there was
need for a central taxonomic facility, in the form of a museum, not a
university. The culture of a museum was completely different from that of a
university. Moreover, a museum would have a critical mass of taxonomists.
That was important because it was difficult for people to do on their own
what was essentially art rather than science; they needed someone to talk
to, compare with and make sure that they were not drifting off into their own
little world, that they were maintaining the criteria.
He added that voucher collections were needed because deep-sea
animals could not just be looked up in a book. If he was working on British
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