Dear Virendra,

Line drawings for the description or redescription of species serve a particular purpose that cannot be duplicated as easily either by light micrographs or scanning electron microscopy. That is, they provide the base map, or basic morphological plan, of a species at the lowest appropriate resolution. The significance and utility of line drawings differs according to taxa: many arthropod are particularly suited to line drawing: the technique can depict structures, texture and the three-dimensional lay-out of a species in ways that are not so easily captured with other imaging techniques. For plants, photographs may be more suitable, but I note an upsurge of interest in taxonomic botanical illustration, especially colour images. Kind Regards, Matt

Thank you Dr. Matt.

I agree with Matt Collof. As regards entomology, which is my field, drawing and photography are both techniques useful, which are a complement each other. Currently, thanks to the progress of photography techniques at light microscope and stereomicroscope, drawings seem to become less important and are less used. However a line drawing serves to better highlight particular features or three-dimensional structures that a photograph is unable to focus completely. This is the case, for example, of the genitalic structures so useful in insects for taxonomic discrimination and for illustration of  taxa new to science. Leafing through taxonomic magazines of recent years I have often the impression that a photograph is preferred to a line drawing especially because the former requires less time and effort to get a decent result. Kind regards,

Rinaldo Nicoli

Dear Sir,

Digital photo plate of plants parts in species description is valid if accompanied by scales.  If  dissected parts are presented through photomicrographs then there is no need to provide line drawings.  However, the need for the line drawings is felt when monographic studies are undertaken.  It is not possible for a monographer to go to the  field and take photographs of all the taxa under the purview of his studies.  If such photography is made compulsory, as done by a reputed Indian journal dealing with publications on plant taxonomy, then it will take whole life for a monographer to complete a single revision.  In case of herbarium specimens, line drawing are more suitable than digital images, as pointed out by Matt.

Regards,

Tapas.

I agree with Rinaldo.

Line drawings and digital photo plates complement each other for enhancing the quality of the publication.