Álvaro García Sepúlveda

University of Otago The Biggest of All Families The History of Taxonomy and its Impact on Society Álvaro García Sepúlveda A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Communication Centre for Science Communication, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand October, 2011 Abstract The aim of this thesis is to analyze the science of taxonomy, its development through time, and how effectively it is communicated to the non-scientific public. Taxonomy is the science of classification of organisms of any kind, living and extinct. Taxonomy helps to understand the phylogenetic relationships and the evolution of organisms. Because of this, taxonomy is a fundamental discipline to understand life on Earth and all biological sciences depend on it to achieve their individual goals of helping humankind in their continual struggle for survival. As a discipline, taxonomy has existed from the start of civilization, and has adapted itself to each new discovery in the domain of biology, expressing in its organization people’s vision of the living world and their place on it. Current taxonomy theories are sustained by the Linnaean classification and the Cladistic method. Using these present models, modern taxonomy has achieved a stable but open state, able to allow new knowledge and self corrections, without risking the integrity of its methods. Despite all this, most non-specialist people remain unaware of the immensity and variety of life on Earth and, most important, on how dependent people are on each and every species around them. The research made during this thesis shows that mass media, such as nonfiction books, school texts, and the Internet, for a series of reasons, do not accomplish the task of communicating the science of taxonomy in a way that makes the non-specialist public be aware of its importance and the importance of its subject of study: life. In this context, this thesis proposes the creation of a new communication tool, devised to focus only on topics related to the classification of life, and its presentation to any kind of public. The Tree of Nature website is conceived as an online encyclopedia of life, which structures itself on the Darwinian tree of life and the Cladistic method to show a consistent abstract of the history of life on Earth. This website is ii based mainly on visuals, avoiding excessive text, scientific jargon and complications related to the laws of hypertext that make other websites difficult and not encouraging to explore. After completing the essential sections of the website, and trying it on specialists in taxonomy and the general public twice, the conclusion is that The Tree of Nature is an effective, although still uncompleted, tool to approach the topic of taxonomy to the general public. Several new additions and corrections will be applied on the medium term to improve the site in all its qualities. iii Acknowledgements This eighteen-month long thesis was for me as much a learning process as a creating process, not simply about the content I was exploring, but also about managing to get a task done, when you have limited time, limited resources, and you do not have all the skills required to do the job. This thesis was the product of an assembling of disciplines: arts, biology, informatics, design, and even anthropology are in some way treated here, and to assemble all the knowledge and work each of these tasks asked from me, I was lucky to get help from many people, from different backgrounds, who I want to acknowledge here. First, Jean Fleming, my supervisor, for hours of proofreading, and maybe a thousand pieces of advice and encouraging words in maybe a hundred different meetings; Iris Sepúlveda, for being an excellent English teacher, my second proofreader and an incredible mother; Joyce Lepperd and her son Louie, for giving me a home during the two years of the master’s course and thesis; Sue Harvey, the Science Communication manager, for helping me in all the tasks related to launching The Tree of Nature website on to the Internet; Vivienne Bryner, for reminding me to start writing the academic thesis on time and not focusing only on the creative component; My classmates Sue Voice, and Sue Odlin, for their help during the Science Teller Festival exhibition, and all their advice and ideas; Cameron McPhail, Languages student, for his help on the translation of scientific names; Nick Meek, Informatics professor, for his advice about software resources and ways to create the iv website; Gerald Tannock, Microbiology professor, Ewan Fordyce, Geology professor, and his students Carolina Loch Santos, and Gabriel Aguirre, for being the first professional testers of the site and for giving me a handful of interesting suggestions to make The Tree of Nature be much more complete and professional; John Williams, Marketing professor, for helping me in devising the survey I used in the Science Festival; Niharika Long, Marine Biology student, for lots of interesting data, “facts of the day”, and for showing me her own thesis as an example to follow; And all the people who tested The Tree of Nature during its (still ongoing) creation, and gave me their sincere opinions and advice. Thank you to all of you. v Table of Contents 1. Chapter 1: What is Taxonomy? 1 1.1. Introduction 1 1.2. What is Taxonomy? 3 1.3. The Importance of Taxonomy 5 2. Chapter 2: The History of Taxonomy 7 2.1. The Evolution of Taxonomy 7 2.2. Three Solutions for the Problem: the Three Schools of Taxonomy 16 2.2.1. The Classic School 16 2.2.2. The Phenetics School 18 2.2.3. The Cladistic School 19 2.3. The Unsolved Questions and How they Could Change our Vision of Taxonomy 21 2.3.1. What is a Species? 21 2.3.2. How Deep Can Convergent Evolution Be? 22 2.3.3. How can we express Endosymbiosis? 24 2.3.4. One First Being or an Entire Ecosystem? 25 2.3.5. What is Life? 27 2.4. Summary 30 3. Chapter 3: Communicating Taxonomy 30 3.1. Taxonomy at Present 30 3.2. What you can find about Taxonomy in the Mass Media 32 3.3. Analysis of the Research 35 3.4. Summary 36 vi 4. Chapter 4: From Seed to Tree, Making of The Tree of Nature 38 4.1. Original Concept 38 4.2. Stage 1: The First Lay out 39 4.3. Stage 2: The Cladistic Approach 42 4.4. Stage 3: Mapping 49 4.4.1. Managing Sources 49 4.4.2. Managing Space and Concepts 50 4.4.3. Complementing Information 53 4.5. Stage 4: Translation of Latin Names 53 4.6. Stage 5: Making it Real 54 4.6.1. Illustrating 56 4.6.2. Digitalizing 58 4.6.3. Preparing for the Internet 58 4.7. Stage 6: Complements 61 4.7.1. Addition of Sources at Bottom of Each Page 61 4.7.2. Addition of Photographs with free Creative Commons Licenses 61 4.7.3. Ownership of My Own Images 62 4.7.4. What is Taxonomy? 63 4.7.5. Material for Teachers 64 4.7.6. Non-Cellular Life section 65 4.7.7. Citation 68 4.7.8. Diversity section 69 4.8. Stage 7: The Tree of Nature Beta 71 4.9. Stage 8: Science Teller Festival 72 vii 4.10. Stage 9: Analysis of the Results 76 5. Conclusion 77 6. Bibliography 81 7. Appendix I: What you can find about Taxonomy in the mass media 85 8. Appendix II: Survey Results 92 viii Chapter 1: What is Taxonomy? 1.1. Introduction The date is Friday the fifth of May, 2011, 12:00 p.m. In front a room half full with science communication students and staff, I show in the screen an image of the well-known caricature character Pikachu (the yellow pet from Pokémon) and I ask the public “How many people in this room know what this animal is?” All of them, even the older teachers, raised their hands immediately, just as I expected. Then I changed to another image, this time a photo of a real animal called the Bilby, a creature similar to the Pikachu in many features, and I asked the same question. This time, less than a quarter of the room raised their hands. The public was composed totally by adults, all of them with a scientific background. However, regardless these conditions, the fictional character overwhelmed the real animal by four to one. This “social experiment” confirmed to me a hypothesis that was wandering in my head from a long time ago: “People are not concerned about the variety of life amongst them”, added a new statement to it: “Even the people who are supposed to be concerned”, and also gave me a new hypothesis: “Maybe because it is something not directly related with people’s immediate needs.” This has been just one of several experiences of the same kind that I have had since my adolescence. Once, a lady asked me: “What is the difference between a jellyfish and an amoeba?” She was a fifty- year-old nurse, so someone supposed to have some concepts of microbiology, but she was asking this question to me, a fifteen-year-old school boy. Another time a couple asked me: “Where do red tides come from?” I answered: “They are caused by a bloom of plankton” and they looked at me as if I were speaking in Swahili or about things from another planet. I explained to them what plankton was and why it was responsible for red tides, and they just answered: “We do not have any reason to know about 1 these kinds of things”.

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