standardization of environmental data and information - International ...

A participant suggested that echinoderms should also be identified
by a group of people working together, in light of studies showing the
dominance of those animals, and especially the holothurians, among the
epibenthic fauna.
A contractor said it was not clear whether the idea was to collect all
the samples at one place for identification or whether a reference center or
museum should be identified which someone could consult when a problem
arose. It would be proper for each contractor to develop its own expertise
instead of centralizing the expertise in one place. At the same time, a
number of reference centres might be selected for different animal groups,
which could be contacted as required.
Smith responded that it would be neither desirable nor even
practical to ask Gordon Paterson, for example, to identify all the
polychaetes collected by a research programme. What might be practical
and beneficial for both parties was for somebody like Paterson to be a
contact and organizer. When the Indian collection, for instance, was at the
point of species differentiation, a scientist from India might work with
Paterson for several months, preparing and learning the fauna so that the
same kinds of judgements were made on species-level differentiation.
Alternatively, a workshop could be convened to do the same thing. The
problem with having a workshop take care of all the training or learning,
however, was that the programmes were at different stages of data
collection and sample identification, so an Indian, a Chinese or a Russian
scientist would probably benefit at different times from interaction with the
central taxonomist. In any event, it was important to have one taxonomist
for each group act as an overseer or a clearinghouse, which taxonomists
would like to do because it allowed them to understand biogeographic
patterns.
The contractor who had raised this point thought Smith’s first
suggestion could work by improving specialization all over the world instead
of centralizing it.
Another participant suggested that, with the aid of a quality-control
taxonomist, many voucher collections could be produced. For example,
someone working on polychaetes in the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone
(CCFZ) could assemble voucher collections of the main species for all the
contractors. Three or four such collections could be loaned to contractors,
who could use them until they had created their own voucher collection.
When they were satisfied that they knew what species A looked like, they
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