Biosystematic information is critical for today's world

Biosystematic information is critical for today's world. Every major concern, such as global warming, food supply, environmental quality, etc., has a biological component that is dependent in part on biosystematic information. What is biosystematic information? Biosystematic information is all data that may be useful to man about organisms, such as what is it, what is it called, what does it look like, where does it occur, what does it do, when does it do it, and what does all this mean to me (= economic importance). Biosystematic information is organized by names arranged in an hierarchical classification based on shared (synapomorphic) similiarities. Hence, biosystematic information can be obtained with a name. Names are obtained by identification of specimens, and identifications are made by matching attributes of unknown with known organisms. While everyone makes some identifications, for diverse and little known organisms, such as insects, identifications are made by systematists. Systematists need the data derived from specimens (and literature) to make the comparsions which lead to identifications, Specimens and their associated literature form collections. So, ultimately the biosystematic information must be derived from systematists and theft collections. And, therefore, the methodology used by systematists to manage theft collections and to produce biosystematic information is critical. Automated Data Processing (ADP) methods hold the promise of greater efficiency, but implementation appears to have caused problems. We, a small working group, met to investigate both the promise and problems, which were summarized by a series of questions. While these questions and our answers follow, our overall conclusion was that the promise was real, but problems were not, being due more to semantics and lack of communication.