As a taxonomist, I usually attempt to illustrate new species wherever possible, not necessarily with a full habitus figure, but at least with illustrations of the important diagnostic parts. The trouble has always been that to do this properly, not only does it require skills that not every taxonomist has, but it also takes a considerable amount of time.

More recently digital imaging using multiple focal layering, should be able to replace this issue, but there may be two issues here: the cost of such imaging equipment and secondly, not every journal permits colour images (or the author has to pay considerable amounts to have them included). On-line journals are, fortunately, permitting more and more colour photography, so hopefully, the next 'generation' of taxonomists (if there is one) will provide lovely habitus photographs.

As journal editorial board member and user of taxonomic litterature, I'm sometimes frustrated, either in my area or in other areas of taxonomy, to not find representation of habitus of a species, and sometimes also in ecology papers.

Dear Dr. Garrouste;

It is an interesting question. In fact, recent publications represents only details of morphological characters but few presentations of the whole body. I think because taxonomy now is about details that distinguish between very related species, genus or families... Maybe !

Best regards

Yeh. This is true, and can justified that the taxonomy at the morphologic or the study of the life cycles or species habitus is hard. So that many studies focus on molecular study, which sometimes takes less time than the first one...

Thank you for answers. To have a wider audience and be attractive, taxonomists and ecologists should make an effort in representing their subjects (animals, plants), don't you think so ? I'm entomologist but when I look to a frog taxonomy paper, I will appreciate to see habitus also and not only the shape of a relevant organ for taxonomy, etc.. Same thing for plant taxonomy and for autecology papers, even in insects taxonomy other than my speciality . We can learn a lot by this way, don't you think so ??

Sure ! I would say that most taxonomists are very suspicious for determination on general habitus so that they kindly avoid us the temptation of short cuts... However, nothing is more frustating than going through the wole process of binary choices between tiny features in a determination key and ending with a final name for an organismethat obviously does not look like your specimen.

Another perspective: sometimes it's not easy to find someone willing to spend all the time it takes to teach/learn how to do it... specially in this digital/molecular era!

As a taxonomist, I usually attempt to illustrate new species wherever possible, not necessarily with a full habitus figure, but at least with illustrations of the important diagnostic parts. The trouble has always been that to do this properly, not only does it require skills that not every taxonomist has, but it also takes a considerable amount of time.

More recently digital imaging using multiple focal layering, should be able to replace this issue, but there may be two issues here: the cost of such imaging equipment and secondly, not every journal permits colour images (or the author has to pay considerable amounts to have them included). On-line journals are, fortunately, permitting more and more colour photography, so hopefully, the next 'generation' of taxonomists (if there is one) will provide lovely habitus photographs.

thak you for answers. I think taxonomist have to improove skills for imaging techniques as important way of popularization of our science and knowledge dissemination. Journals helps us now to do that by several way and we needs to keep in mind we might be red by non specialist.

Taxonomists often think that their publications are aimed at a limited audience of specialists, so they only fit the designs of essential male or female genitals, omitting to publish complete images of the body of insects. It is a very backward way of thinking: in fact, advances in camera technology - available to a wider audience - allow to highlight all the details of the body of an insect, both in the foreground and in the second and third floor. Even the taxonomic keys should make greater use of external photographic characters. Many experts, however, rely only on the extraction of the genitals without trying to discover new external characters that could be used easily by the agronomists and all those involved in applied entomology.

Indeed, but the flip side of that is that many non-taxonomists attempt to identify species based on gross external morphology alone, predominantly by colour pattern, which is a very unsatisfactory and unreliable route to identification. Those genera in which the internal organs are often the focal point of taxonomic papers are often the very ones that have complex issues regarding species complexes of many loo-alike taxa, necessitating the examination of genitalia for correct identification. There often is no short cut ....

the colors of the body can often confuse non-taxonomists, this is true. However, I believe that even with the macrophotography, should be placed greater emphasis on the external characters as the general shape of head, the proportions between segments of antennae, tarsi , legs, etc..

Hardcore taxonomic descriptions are meant for specialists only, so pictography of only the important parts is included. For non-specialists, special types of taxonomic literature is available, including great deal of photographs.