[Coral-List] do coral studies lack crucial species information??
Douglas Fenner
douglasfennertassi at gmail.com
Fri Jul 20 17:16:05 EDT 2018
I recently spotted this piece (open access):
Most insect studies lack crucial species information
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-01541-0?
utm_source=briefing-dy&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20180205
"Survey results suggest that a lot of entomology research could be
impossible to replicate."
"More than 98% of entomology papers contain so little species information
on the insects being studied that they are essentially impossible to
replicate, according to a survey of more than 550 articles published in
2016."
Come to think of it, I don't remember many studies on corals in the
Indo-Pacific that include this kind of info. May not be necessary in the
Caribbean, where many of the corals are easy to ID, but nearly all
Indo-Pacific coral species have at least one other species (usually
several) that are the very devil to tell apart. Many studies in the I-P
report results only at the genus level, which are vastly easier to ID, and
thus more certain. But I think this is a potential problem for work done
with individual species in the Indo-Pacific. What do you think? We do
need information at the species level, species within genera differ on all
kinds of things, and can differ in dramatic ways.
Cheers, Doug
--
Douglas Fenner
Contractor for NOAA NMFS Protected Species, and consultant
PO Box 7390
Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799 USA
New online open-access field guide to 300 coral species in Chagos, Indian
Ocean
http://chagosinformationportal.org/corals
By getting serious about limiting global warming, the world could save
itself more than $20 trillion. (action would cost only a half trillion
over 30 years, a third the cost of the Iraq war, benefits would be 40 times
costs, that's a huge return on investment) http://www.latimes.com/
science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-global-warming-costs-20180523-story.html
The cost of a warming climate http://www.readcube.com/
articles/10.1038/d41586-018-05198-7
Climate costs http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1038/d41586-018-05219-5
Large potential reduction in economic damages under UN mitigation targets
(and 30% loss of world economy if the climate is allowed to warm by 4oC)
http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1038/s41586-018-0071-9
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