December, 1999 
SCAMIT Newsletter 
Vol. 18, No. 8 
We have begun the process through preparation 
of uniform provisional species sheets which are 
distributed through the organization. Individual 
agencies also have internal sheets giving aids 
to recognition of forms believed or known to 
be undescribed. These have helped create a 
more stable regional taxonomy, one of the 
original aims of the organization. SCAMIT 
was available to function in the two full-scale 
trials of the regional monitoring concept which 
have been undertaken locally - the SCBPP in 
1994, and Bight’98 in 1998. In both we 
contributed to program quality assurance and 
quality control. With increasingly diverse 
participation such control assumes a larger and 
larger role in the success of regional initiatives. 
Much of the credibility of the resulting 
analyses and reports will be due to rigorous 
pursuit of uniform and demonstrably high 
quality data throughout the effort. As we 
proceeded with these efforts we were forced to 
consider what was, and what was not, an 
accurate identification of a given organism, and 
how taxonomic sufficiency should be judged. 
Our success as an organization and the tangible 
benefits to local taxonomic practice has 
stimulated efforts to create similar groups in 
other areas. In the mid-eighties efforts were 
made to form a SCAMIT-like group on the 
East Coast. Since nearly all of the taxonomists 
in that area were employed by competing 
commercial firms, self-interest stymied the 
exchange of views and information essential to 
our success, and no viable organization could 
be created. In the nineties a more successful 
effort was undertaken in the Pacific Northwest, 
resulting in the creation of our sister 
organization NAMIT. 
During SCAMIT’s brief existence we have 
witnessed a strong trend of change in the 
taxonomy we practice. At our beginning there 
was a general belief that many of the animals 
we encountered were the same as those 
described in other portions of the world. 
Cosmopolitanism, based either on broad 
tolerance to environmental variability or to 
transport by human agency, was viewed as a 
normal distributional pattern. Now it is viewed 
as something to be proven, and assumed untrue 
until such proof is offered. While we have 
become increasingly aware of how often 
anthropogenic transport has inoculated one 
biota with species from another, it is also 
patent that only the very exceptional species is 
truly cosmopolitan (or even tropicopolitan). 
As the mind set of local taxonomists has 
changed, more and more species have been 
recognized as only grossly similar to related 
European congeners. While this can be fluffed 
off as part of the “lumpers vs. splitters” debate, 
I think that it represents something else; a 
closer attention to detail and a better 
understanding (often experimentally gained) of 
the limits of variation within a given 
population. Not that the members of SCAMIT 
are ever in unanimity, they continue to have 
different and non-compatible views on most 
issues. Because of this diversity of opinion and 
experience within the membership, the 
organization has admirably served its purpose 
of increasing and facilitating dialogue on 
taxonomic issues. 
Since our inception we have been a small, local 
organization of limited and specialized 
membership. Over the past few years, and with 
our expansion into the digital domain via the 
World Wide Web, we have begun to reach a 
wider audience. The majority of our 
membership is now electronic, and the number 
of members from outside the southern 
California uniopolis of Santa Barbara/Los 
Angeles/San Diego is greater than ever before. 
Webmaster Jay Shrake’s recent posting of the 
hit list for the website over one period 
demonstrated that only a minority of SCAMIT 
home-page visits originate in southern 
California. This is both an encouragement and 
a significant challenge. 
2 
