F. Christian Thompson and Thomas Pape – Systema Dipterorum: Sherborn’s critical influence in getting information control over a megadiverse group

Event Date: 28 October 2011
Flett Lecture Theatre
Natural History Museum

Anchoring Biodiversity Information:

From Sherborn to the 21st century and beyond

F. Christian Thompson and Thomas Pape
Systema Dipterorum: Sherborn’s critical influence in getting information control over a megadiverse group

Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
Natural History Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen Systema Dipterorum
Email: tpape@snm.ku.dk

The order Diptera (Insecta), flies, is a megadiverse group, representing some 15% or more of the known species of organisms. Scientific names are tags to concepts (hypotheses), called species, by which we organize our knowledge of biodiversity. Our Systema Dipterorum provides an index to all scientific names related to flies, so access to our knowledge about them is readily available. Sherborn more than a century ago attempted to provide such an index to all animal names. He did provide an index to all names published up until and including 1850. We compare our indexes, revealing how standards have changed and the number of names increased. Today, more and better resources are being made available to us, such as the Biodiversity Heritage Library, and our standards are higher (new International Code of Zoological Nomenclature), but regardless of all the change, Sherborn for his time provided an almost perfect (99.9%) index.