SEMINAR: Friday July 30 1999, 11:00 am
Lister Hill Center (NIH BLdg 38A), 8th floor conference room

Ian Harrison
Department of Ichthyology, Division of Vertebrate Zoology
American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY 10024

is a candidate for the NCBI/Genbank taxonomist position.
The title and abstract of his seminar are appended below.

  Detlef


TAXONOMIC ISSUES ASSOCIATED WITH ANALYZING RECENT EXTINCTIONS

Extinctions are often portrayed as the prime indicator that human
impacts on global ecosystems have become increasingly deleterious in
the last several hundred years. However, existing lists of extinction
organisms are not accurate. This is partly because of taxonomic
inconsistencies that have resulted from the application of different
species concepts, and from an incomplete understanding of the taxonomy
of the species in question.  Taxonomic rigor has often been overlooked
in favor of ecological information, despite the fact that this
ecological information is meaningless if it cannot be reliably
attributed to the correct species.  Furthermore, systematic
evaluations of extinctions in groups of related species are useful to
both evolutionary and conservation biologists.  Quantitative
investigations of the relationship between species loss and the loss
of evolutionary information can describe the direct contribution that
a species makes to the evolutionary content of a phylogeny. Thus, a
reliable analysis of the patterns of phylogenetic relationships is
necessary prior to defining conservation priorities.