ROSS: SYSTEMATIC ENTOMOLOGY 



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authors of earlier taxonomic literature were, in effect, collectors who just hap- 

 pened to limit their objectives and technique to insects. Many of them often 

 had no desire to be biologists. Thomas L. Casey, who described about 9,400 spe- 

 cies of Coleoptera, mostly from the United States, is an excellent example of this 

 type of worker. Such workers may at times write skillful detailed descriptions 

 of the external features of a limited series of long dead, partially examined 

 specimens, but they seldom have a knowledge of the species as living elements. 

 Few of them investigate the basic anatomy of their subjects, the biology and 

 developmental stages, or the full geographic distribution of genera in order to 

 assemble data leading to a sound and lasting classification. 



Thus the lamentable tendency in entomology is not to specialize in a broad 

 zoological sense in the study of a limited group of organisms. There is instead 

 a marked tendency to study only one aspect or phase of a large group — often 

 that of an extensive order. Thus we have not only taxonomists but specialists 

 within taxonomy, i.e., species describers, cataloguers, specialists in nomencla- 

 tural law, and so on. Sometimes, particularly to serve the needs of applied ento- 

 mology, certain specialists will study just the larval stage of a group; while 

 others study the adults, with little or no knowledge of the larvae. Other special- 

 ists may study the group's biology, and still others its anatomy and physiology, 

 or its importance in applied science. 



There are many good reasons why this has happened, most of which involve 

 individual aptitude, training, ability, or desire. Behind all this lies the factor 

 of the size of the insect world. An almost limitless supply of raw material is 

 available to stimulate the production of the superficial taxonomist. Furthermore, 

 in any generation the workers studying a given group may be so few, and they 

 may have so much in common, that criticism is absent. 



It thus seems to me that the greatest step toward the improvement of future 

 systematic studies would be for each worker to deal intensively with a special 

 taxonomic group, a group sufficiently limited so that he will not be required to 

 adopt arbitrary and artificial geographic bounds. It will then be possible for 

 him actually to know the literature, and there would be real hope for a sound 

 evaluation of the past nomenclature, based, as far as possible, on the examina- 

 tion of types. Progress in this phase might be marked by the publication of re- 

 visionary works of lasting value. Once the taxonomic situation is in hand, a 

 worker, instead of passing on to the systematics of some other group (as he will 

 undoubtedly do, regardless of this discussion), should initiate or accelerate truly 

 biological investigations of the group. Novelties in the unstudied material in 

 museums can then be described with a clear conscience. Field trips can be made, 

 when necessary, to regions where the specimen sampling is incomplete or is prom- 

 ising. Whatever the region, new discoveries will fall into proper order, often 

 indicating new concepts for examination. Biological, anatomical, and other lines 

 of inquiry can be reported upon and used as data for perfecting systematics, and 

 all information can be "card indexed," with an increasingly sound and stabilized 

 nomenclature. 



Many will argue that, if all the workers of the past had been engaged in in- 

 vestigations of this intensive type, conducting broad studies within small sec- 

 tions of the insect world, we would today have a very uneven coverage of the 

 field. Certain groups would be known in great detail, others very poorly. The 



