Yes, to be sure, the sheer tonnage of such research articles that have begun to clog the waste cycle will lead to chaos if only through the lack of space to dump them. If I may, I'd just like to slightly digress here, for your comment made me recall an event a few years ago when I was introduced to the World of the Molecular Systematist.
I have always felt that the real testing ground of any classification is the field and the living creatures' interaction with their particular environment. In this age of the laboratory zoologist everyone is being forced into ever refined areas of specialization. As desirable as this may be, many of these specialists would agree that it also has a number of serious short-comings. It is just so easy to be blinded by one's own brilliance the more one specializes - it's a bit like the old stake driven deeply into the ground - plenty of depth but poor overall impact at the broader level.
Now, an interesting example occurred once while I was on a field trip in eastern Australia. I had been hired to collect specimens, as is often the case, for a university research project studying the molecular biology of marsupials. On this particular occasion I was accompanied by a number of female post-graduate students who all considered themselves experts in their various areas of mammalogy - and with some justification I suppose, because I couldn't understand much of what they were talking about. Finding animals in their natural habitat often depends upon being very quiet...hence I usually do not take dogs or women with me on field trips if it can be avoided because they often just create so much noise and complication. What with spiders jumping on them, the inevitable rest breaks and of course the incessant talking, any serious field work has to suffer. But they offered money for my services, and like any good intellectual prostitute or zoological mercenary, principles take a back seat to the need to pay the rent. As we searched for specimens, I just kept thinking how strange it was that biologists seem to constantly forget that reproduction is the prime directive in nature, and all this chasing knowledge can have serious genetic consequences - particularly for females. Yet here they were...a number of our populations' finest - a veritable Miss World Pageant if the truth be known - babbling about molecules and genes in country that can kill you stone dead in an instant if you don't play by its rules. On this particular trip the bush was fairly humming with the chatter of out-groups, satellites, markers and sequences. It was all a mystery to me, but as I said most of them were fairly attractive, so I wasn't really interested in their intellects - and being a herpetologist - well, you know what I mean...
Anyway, back to the point...Strangely, none of them had had sufficient field experience to be able to locate the animals that they were the Authorities on. They were great in genes and magnificent on molecules but a bit weak on life. That's fair enough though, given that it can take half a life-time to get a Degree, and field work doesn't leave much time for a normal life. But what really stunned me was when one of the persons responsible for work on the molecular systematics of Pseudocheirus peregrinus (Ring-tail Possums)- didn't know what the hell it was when they finally observed the creature in the flesh! She had spent years peering at their molecules without having the opportunity to see the whole animal. Sadly, she actually thought it was a strange rat when I caught one for her...When I pointed out that it was actually a Ring-tail Possum, it was plain she felt a little violated by the experience. I just mumbled something like, "oh well, we all make mistakes, after all possums and rats ARE both mammals" ...as I wondered off into the bush on my own to look for death adders...
And in the years since I have often had cause to wonder if other molecular systematists could have benefited from a bit more direct contact with nature...

Richard Wells

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