If one sees taxonomy and systematics as different things, then my answer would be no. On the other hand, a taxonomic revision of the species living in Australia would certainly be a useful thing to have. It all depends on the aim of the work.

However, in the cases I am aware of, the Australian fauna is very deceptive and phylogenetically important. With this I mean that there are formerly unrecognized world-wide groups and relict types that have contacts to many directions. A phylogenetic analysis of these without previous (or simultanious) knowledge of the world fauna is not that great an idea.

If there are good reasons to consider those, e.g., Japanese stag beetles a monophyletic  (holo- or paraphyletic) group (like e.g. South Asian Sternocera Esch. discussed in my Julodinae Lac. book), then of course why not? (in such case it will be a systematics of that group, interesting irrespective of its geographical distribution). But if it is only an accidental (from the systematic point of view) assembly of species which just "by chance" happen to occur in Japan (like S-Asian Julodis Esch from the same book), then analysiing their systematic relationships separately (without careful consideration of the extralimital representatives) would be no more than a formal game of no scientific value.

Best wishes for the New Year!

Roman

People have always been keen to understand what species occur in their backyard, and how they should be classified. Even if the assemblage does not meet the monophyly criteria mentioned by Roman, work on a given fauna, including systematics but not restricted to it, is useful.

First keep in mind that even when we analyse the complete known world fauna for a group, this may in fact be incomplete as dome species are not known, or key fossils not included. Completeness is great, but when all we can confidently put together is data for one area, this sure is better than nothing.

Second, this clears the way for ID keys and field guides - if these are phylo.

Third, faunas inform the delimitation of biogeographic units, and more recently this process can be informed by phylogeny. Faunas for those units are thus biogeographically meaningful.

Fourth, useful even in non-biogeographic units such as countries - remember that conservation is implemented in such units and phylogenetic information can again be of value here.

Sorry, Serban, but I still do not see what could be the sense of a special study of the systematics of, say, Polish reptiles? We have here, as far as I'm aware (I am not a herpetologist, so the numbers may be somewhat different) 9 species (out of >9000 known) representing 6 (out of >70 recent and much more extinct) families of 2 (out of 4 recent and ca. 20 extinct) orders, and even within a family Polish species are (almost?) never closely related... In this situation, any result would be in fact no better than that based on dicing (the saying that "garbage in, garbage out" is true not only if we use a computer)!

It would be more holistic to look at the worldwide distribution but I see no harm in doing a localised study that will later contribute to a broader study

If one sees taxonomy and systematics as different things, then my answer would be no. On the other hand, a taxonomic revision of the species living in Australia would certainly be a useful thing to have. It all depends on the aim of the work.

However, in the cases I am aware of, the Australian fauna is very deceptive and phylogenetically important. With this I mean that there are formerly unrecognized world-wide groups and relict types that have contacts to many directions. A phylogenetic analysis of these without previous (or simultanious) knowledge of the world fauna is not that great an idea.

I agree with you.

I think it does for several reasons.

It is not possible to do a complete collection. Just because only 9 reptiles are described for Poland is not a definitive answer that we have found everything. Another survey might (but probably won't) find a new species. It is a different issue if you pick a place that has more species and fewer herpetologists (say Chile or Congo).

What is the value of biodiversity? If we kill off a few thousand more species should we care? Where do we stop, or how do we stop? Another beetle went extinct today, two more tomorrow, and a plant and a salamander the day after that. If we don't understand what is being lost, if we cannot see the losses, how can we hope to understand the ecosystems that are affected by such loss?

As with all surveys, one needs to start somewhere. If a local survey is only valid conditionally on a worldwide survey, then it is likely that the local survey will never happen.

So, how many Dytiscid experts would be required to collect/identify/manage a world wide sampling effort with at least one trap from every 10 square miles of land surface monitored every week for two years? Or, what is the sampling intensity of a world wide program that provides sufficient resolution and power to satisfy the contextual requirements to make the local survey valid?

Sorry again, but what are we speaking about - systematics or faunistics? Of course it is - from many points of view -  important to know, e.g., how many species of reptiles we have in Poland and which species they are - but systematics is the science of the taxonomic and evolutionary relationships among species, not just their identification and cataloguing. So, a study of systematics of Polish reptiles would be like analysing the history and structure of Polish nation based on Polish tourists in New Zealand... We can, of course, after careful analysis discover that e.g. Anguis fragilis is more closely related to Lacerta viridis than either is to Emys orbicularis, but what would be the real value of such discovery???

Roman, a fair question.

I would separate taxonomy and systematics. I think of taxonomy as the identification of species, the production of keys for such identification, and the description of species that do not fall into existing keys. Systematics is more about the evolutionary relationships and taking the data that a taxonomist uses to try and figure out the most parsimonious keys based on shared characteristics. The assumption is then that the most parsimonious branching pattern represents the most probable evolutionary path. The problem is that we never have all the characters nor all the species. In addition to systematics, taxonomic data can also be used in biodiversity studies and various ecological studies. I accept that the definitions for systematics and taxonomy differ depending on whom you ask.

How about this: Australia is a fairly large area. It has been relatively isolated for a while. Lars has projects dealing with the predaceous diving beetles in Timor and New Zealand, and the Pacific rim. Lars also has examined the evolution of Australian diving beetle assemblages during the Cenozoic. So he has projects that set a context in both time and space to evaluate the systematics of Australian Dytiscidae. I don't really see a problem here.

That said, this seems like an odd question for a professor of entomology at an institute for systematic zoology.

I suspect he meant to be a bit sarcastic...