Focus on taxonomy and funding issues

Hi all,

I just came across an online discussion in the TAXACOM mailing list about the difficulties of getting funding for taxonomy work. The discussions have been going on for a while but were nicely summarised by Fabian Haas here.

The discussion goes under the title *Why Taxonomy does not matter?* and deals with the reasons why taxonomy doesn't seem to appeal much to donors at the time of choosing a field to dump money on.

While barcoding is much more than just taxonomy, reading this summary will be useful for everyone doing a grant application. Knowing beforehand what donors tend to think about this particular issue may help *focus* the rationale for a project involving barcoding.

Some of the points/arguments discussed are:

• Most species don't matter
• Taxonomy lacks innovativeness
• Taxonomy is over-accurate
• Taxonomic knowledge is available
• Taxonomy is stamp collection
• Taxonomy small budget research
• A lack of sense of community amongst taxonomist

Again, the discussion is stored in this link.

Cheers,

Claudio