Photography-based taxonomy is inadequate, unnecessary, and potentially harmful for biological sciences

The question whether taxonomic descriptions naming new animal species without type specimen(s) deposited in collections should be accepted for publication by scientific journals and allowed by the Code has already been discussed in Zootaxa (Dubois & Nemésio 2007; Donegan 2008, 2009; Nemésio 2009a–b; Dubois 2009; Gentile & Snell 2009; Minelli 2009; Cianferoni & Bartolozzi 2016; Amorim et al. 2016). This question was again raised in a letter supported by 35 signatories published in the journal Nature (Pape et al. 2016) on 15 September 2016. On 25 September 2016, the following rebuttal (strictly limited to 300 words as per the editorial rules of Nature) was submitted to Nature, which on 18 October 2016 refused to publish it. As we think this problem is a very important one for zoological taxonomy, this text is published here exactly as submitted to Nature, followed by the list of the 493 taxonomists and collection-based researchers who signed it in the short time span from 20 September to 6 October 2016

Averting biodiversity collapse in tropical forest protected areas

The rapid disruption of tropical forests probably imperils global biodiversity more than any other contemporary phenomenon¹⁻³. With deforestation advancing quickly, protected areas are increasingly becoming final refuges for threatened species and natural ecosystem processes. However, many protected areas in the tropics are themselves vulnerable to human encroachment and other environmental stresses⁴⁻⁹. As pressures mount, it is vital to know whether existing reserves can sustain their biodiversity. A critical constraint in addressing this question has been that data describing a broad array of biodiversity groups have been unavailable for a sufficiently large and representative sample of reserves. Here we present a uniquely comprehensive data set on changes over the past 20 to 30 years in 31 functional groups of species and 21 potential drivers of environmental change, for 60 protected areas stratified across the world’s major tropical regions. Our analysis reveals great variation in reserve ‘health’: about half of all reserves have been effective or performed passably, but the rest are experiencing an erosion of biodiversity that is often alarmingly widespread taxonomically and functionally. Habitat disruption, hunting and forest-product exploitation were the strongest predictors of declining reserve health. Crucially, environmental changes immediately outside reserves seemed nearly as important as those inside in determining their ecological fate, with changes inside reserves strongly mirroring those occurring around them. These findings suggest that tropical protected areas are often intimately linked ecologically to their surrounding habitats, and that a failure to stem broad-scale loss and degradation of such habitats could sharply increase the likelihood of serious biodiversity declines.Keywords: Ecology, Environmental scienc

Averting biodiversity collapse in tropical forest protected areas

The rapid disruption of tropical forests probably imperils global biodiversity more than any other contemporary phenomenon. With deforestation advancing quickly, protected areas are increasingly becoming final refuges for threatened species and natural ecosystem processes. However, many protected areas in the tropics are themselves vulnerable to human encroachment and other environmental stresses. As pressures mount, it is vital to know whether existing reserves can sustain their biodiversity. A critical constraint in addressing this question has been that data describing a broad array of biodiversity groups have been unavailable for a sufficiently large and representative sample of reserves. Here we present a uniquely comprehensive data set on changes over the past 20 to 30 years in 31 functional groups of species and 21 potential drivers of environmental change, for 60 protected areas stratified across the world’s major tropical regions. Our analysis reveals great variation in reserve ‘health’: about half of all reserves have been effective or performed passably, but the rest are experiencing an erosion of biodiversity that is often alarmingly widespread taxonomically and functionally. Habitat disruption, hunting and forest-product exploitation were the strongest predictors of declining reserve health. Crucially, environmental changes immediately outside reserves seemed nearly as important as those inside in determining their ecological fate, with changes inside reserves strongly mirroring those occurring around them. These findings suggest that tropical protected areas are often intimately linked ecologically to their surrounding habitats, and that a failure to stem broad-scale loss and degradation of such habitats could sharply increase the likelihood of serious biodiversity declines.William F. Laurance, D. Carolina Useche, Julio Rendeiro, Margareta Kalka, Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Sean P. Sloan, Susan G. Laurance, Mason Campbell, Kate Abernethy, Patricia Alvarez, Victor Arroyo-Rodriguez, Peter Ashton, Julieta Benítez-Malvido, Allard Blom, Kadiri S. Bobo, Charles H. Cannon, Min Cao, Richard Carroll, Colin Chapman, Rosamond Coates, Marina Cords, Finn Danielsen, Bart De Dijn, Eric Dinerstein, Maureen A. Donnelly, David Edwards, Felicity Edwards, Nina Farwig, Peter Fashing, Pierre-Michel Forget, Mercedes Foster, George Gale, David Harris, Rhett Harrison, John Hart, Sarah Karpanty, W. John Kress, Jagdish Krishnaswamy, Willis Logsdon, Jon Lovett, William Magnusson, Fiona Maisels, Andrew R. Marshall, Deedra McClearn, Divya Mudappa, Martin R. Nielsen, Richard Pearson, Nigel Pitman, Jan van der Ploeg, Andrew Plumptre, John Poulsen, Mauricio Quesada, Hugo Rainey, Douglas Robinson, Christiane Roetgers, Francesco Rovero, Frederick Scatena, Christian Schulze, Douglas Sheil, Thomas Struhsaker, John Terborgh, Duncan Thomas, Robert Timm, J. Nicolas Urbina-Cardona, Karthikeyan Vasudevan, S. Joseph Wright, Juan Carlos Arias-G., Luzmila Arroyo, Mark Ashton, Philippe Auzel, Dennis Babaasa, Fred Babweteera, Patrick Baker, Olaf Banki, Margot Bass, Inogwabini Bila-Isia, Stephen Blake, Warren Brockelman, Nicholas Brokaw, Carsten A. Brühl, Sarayudh Bunyavejchewin, Jung-Tai Chao, Jerome Chave, Ravi Chellam, Connie J. Clark, José Clavijo, Robert Congdon, Richard Corlett, H. S. Dattaraja, Chittaranjan Dave, Glyn Davies, Beatriz de Mello Beisiegel, Rosa de Nazaré Paes da Silva, Anthony Di Fiore, Arvin Diesmos, Rodolfo Dirzo, Diane Doran-Sheehy, Mitchell Eaton, Louise Emmons, Alejandro Estrada, Corneille Ewango, Linda Fedigan, François Feer, Barbara Fruth, Jacalyn Giacalone Willis, Uromi Goodale, Steven Goodman, Juan C. Guix, Paul Guthiga, William Haber, Keith Hamer, Ilka Herbinger, Jane Hill, Zhongliang Huang, I Fang Sun, Kalan Ickes, Akira Itoh, Natália Ivanauskas, Betsy Jackes, John Janovec, Daniel Janzen, Mo Jiangming, Chen Jin, Trevor Jones, Hermes Justiniano, Elisabeth Kalko, Aventino Kasangaki, Timothy Killeen, Hen-biau King, Erik Klop, Cheryl Knott, Inza Koné, Enoka Kudavidanage, José Lahoz da Silva Ribeiro, John Lattke, Richard Laval, Robert Lawton, Miguel Leal, Mark Leighton, Miguel Lentino, Cristiane Leonel, Jeremy Lindsell, Lee Ling-Ling, K. Eduard Linsenmair, Elizabeth Losos, Ariel Lugo, Jeremiah Lwanga, Andrew L. Mack, Marlucia Martins, W. Scott McGraw, Roan McNab, Luciano Montag, Jo Myers Thompson, Jacob Nabe-Nielsen, Michiko Nakagawa, Sanjay Nepal, Marilyn Norconk, Vojtech Novotny, Sean O'Donnell, Muse Opiang, Paul Ouboter, Kenneth Parker, N. Parthasarathy, Kátia Pisciotta, Dewi Prawiradilaga, Catherine Pringle, Subaraj Rajathurai, Ulrich Reichard, Gay Reinartz, Katherine Renton, Glen Reynolds, Vernon Reynolds, Erin Riley, Mark-Oliver Rödel, Jessica Rothman, Philip Round, Shoko Sakai, Tania Sanaiotti, Tommaso Savini, Gertrud Schaab, John Seidensticker, Alhaji Siaka, Miles R. Silman, Thomas B. Smith, Samuel Soares de Almeida, Navjot Sodhi, Craig Stanford, Kristine Stewart, Emma Stokes, Kathryn E. Stoner, Raman Sukumar, Martin Surbeck, Mathias Tobler, Teja Tscharntke, Andrea Turkalo, Govindaswamy Umapathy, Merlijn van Weerd, Jorge Vega Rivera, Meena Venkataraman, Linda Venn, Carlos Verea, Carolina Volkmer de Castilho, Matthias Waltert, Benjamin Wang, David Watts, William Weber, Paige West, David Whitacre, Ken Whitney, David Wilkie, Stephen Williams, Debra D. Wright, Patricia Wright, Lu Xiankai, Pralad Yonzon & Franky Zamzan

Underlying Event measurements in pp collisions at root s=0.9 and 7 TeV with the ALICE experiment at the LHC

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)We present measurements of Underlying Event observables in pp collisions at root s = 0 : 9 and 7 TeV. The analysis is performed as a function of the highest charged-particle transverse momentum p(T),L-T in the event. Different regions are defined with respect to the azimuthal direction of the leading (highest transverse momentum) track: Toward, Transverse and Away. The Toward and Away regions collect the fragmentation products of the hardest partonic interaction. The Transverse region is expected to be most sensitive to the Underlying Event activity. The study is performed with charged particles above three different p(T) thresholds: 0.15, 0.5 and 1.0 GeV/c. In the Transverse region we observe an increase in the multiplicity of a factor 2-3 between the lower and higher collision energies, depending on the track p(T) threshold considered. Data are compared to PYTHIA 6.4, PYTHIA 8.1 and PHOJET. On average, all models considered underestimate the multiplicity and summed p(T) in the Transverse region by about 10-30%.7Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation from LisbonSwiss Fonds Kidagan, ArmeniaConselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos (FINEP)Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC)Chinese Ministry of Education (CMOE)Ministry of Science and Technology of China (MSTC)Ministry of Education and Youth of the Czech RepublicDanish Natural Science Research CouncilCarlsberg FoundationDanish National Research FoundationEuropean Research Council under European CommunityHelsinki Institute of PhysicsAcademy of FinlandFrench CNRS-IN2P3Region Pays de LoireRegion AlsaceRegion AuvergneCEA, FranceGerman BMBFHelmholtz AssociationGeneral Secretariat for Research and Technology, Ministry of Development, GreeceHungarian OTKANational Office for Research and Technology (NKTH)Department of Atomic EnergyDepartment of Science and Technology of the Government of IndiaIstituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) of ItalyMEXT, JapanJoint Institute for Nuclear Research, DubnaNational Research Foundation of Korea (NRF)CONACYTDGAPA, MexicoALFA-ECHELEN Program (High-Energy physics Latin-American-European Network)Stichting voor Fundamenteel Onderzoek der Materie (FOM)Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO), NetherlandsResearch Council of Norway (NFR)Polish Ministry of Science and Higher EducationNational Authority for Scientific Research - NASR (Autoritatea Nationala pentru Cercetare Stiintifica - ANCS)Federal Agency of Science of the Ministry of Education and Science of Russian FederationInternational Science and Technology Center, Russian Academy of SciencesRussian Federal Agency of Atomic EnergyRussian Federal Agency for Science and InnovationsCERN-INTASMinistry of Education of SlovakiaDepartment of Science and Technology, South AfricaCIEMATEELAMinisterio de Educacion y Ciencia of SpainXunta de Galicia (Conselleria de Educacion)CEADENCubaenergia, CubaIAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency)Swedish Reseach Council (VR)Knut & Alice Wallenberg Foundation (KAW)Ukraine Ministry of Education and ScienceUnited Kingdom Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)The United States Department of EnergyUnited States National Science FoundationState of TexasState of OhioFundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq