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CHECKLISTS, SYSTEMATICS AND THE CLECOM INITIATIVE: AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW FROM EUROPE

2006; Umeå University; Volume: 49; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.4002/1543-8120-49.1.225

2168-9075

Robert A. D. Cameron, Beata M. Pokryszko, Adolf Riedel, Andrzej Wiktor,

Mollusks and Parasites Studies

Davis (2004) raised important issues about the function and construction of species checklists, and, by way of examples, provided a critique of two recent lists produced in Europe: the CLECOM I list for the land and freshwater Mollusca of northern, Atlantic and central Europe (Falkner et al., 2001), and the more detailed list for France alone (Bouchet, 2002; Falkner et al., 2002). It may be noted that CLECOM I is accompanied by CLECOM sections I and II (Bank et al., 2001), which provides a supraspecific classification for a larger area, including the whole of Europe, Turkey and Macaronesia. His critique provoked two responses from the authors (Bouchet, 2006; Bank et al., 2006). In the first of these, some differences of opinion are thought to reflect the impact of real differences in the degree and character of taxonomic differentiation in regional faunas on thought and practice, while in the second the authors suggest that Davis is privileging molecular taxonomy at the expense of the use of morphological characters. The reference by Davis (2004) to the notorious “Nouvelle Ecole” of Bourguignat and his followers (Dance, 1970), in particular, is seen as provocative and unjustified. We note that a significant part of these arguments relate as much to the principles and procedures of classification as to the function and content of checklists as such. Both Davis and his respondents raise general and more specific issues; the latter are mainly concerned with details of work on particular freshwater groups. As workers mainly on terrestrial molluscs, we do not intend to enter into those debates. We believe, however, that the general issues are of significance to the malacological community, and there is a danger that arguments about such lists could become very parochial, reinforcing the rather negative image that tarnishes taxonomists generally. At the extreme, they could provide MALACOLOGIA, 2006, 49(1): 225−230