biswabrata goswami
MIDNAPORE, 30 JUNE: Once Latin was the lingua franca of science to name animals and plants with precision. However, now, botanists will no longer be required to provide Latin descriptions of new species. And publication in online academic journals and books will be considered as valid as print publication.
The move is a part of a major effort taken in the last International Congress of Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN) to speed up the process of naming new plants because in many cases it is feared they might die out before they are officially recognised.
The rules, which were approved at a nomenclature conference held in conjunction with the International Botanical Congress in July at Melbourne in 2011, has become effective from 1 January 2012, but most Indian scientists, research scholars and publishers are less aware about the new development.
Even, the major changes in naming algae, fungi and plants, which were taken in the last Congress as part of the Melbourne Code, have not yet been included in the syllabus of the respective subjects in our country. “Eliminating the Latin requirement and moving to electronic publication will really expedite and simplify the process of describing the diversity that&’s out there,” Dr Amal Kumar Mondol, a Fellow of The Linnean Society and associate professor of Vidyasagar University, who was the sole representative at the Congress from West Bengal, said. “This step will hopefully help taxonomists in their race to document biological diversity before it is lost to the deforestation and habitat degradation that threatens their extinction,” Dr Mondol said.
Botanists hope that an additional benefit of electronic publication of new species will be that more researchers will have easy access to the information.
“As many universities and research institutions in the developing world cannot afford to subscribe to large numbers of journals, it is hoped that this will improve access for a greater number of the world&’s taxonomists,” a research scholar of Vidyasagar University said, adding that for practical reasons, the Pasteur Institute in Paris recently decided to publish its venerable Annales de l’Institut Pasteur in English.
Dr Mondol has welcomed the changes as an important step in modernising and accelerating one of the basic activities of the biological sciences ~ cataloging the world&’s biodiversity.
He, however, said: “Our country is being treated as a Mega Bio-Diversity Hot Spot because of the presence of Eastern Himalayan region or Indomalaya and Indo-Burma Eco-zones and Western Ghata hills. These two biogeographic regions are significant reservoirs of biodiversity that is under threat from humans. But, surprisingly, authorities concerned have never expressed compliance to hold such Congress in our country, while our neighbour, China, is all set to hold the next such Congress in 2017.”