The spy who loved frogs and taxonomy as a digital backwater

A nice article by Brendan Borrell about the secret life of herpetologist Edward Taylor, and Rafe Brown's efforts to untangle his taxonomic legacy has appeared in Nature:

Borrell, B. (2013). Taxonomy: The spy who loved frogs. Nature, 501(7466), 150–153. doi:10.1038/501150a

Fascinating article, but as always I'm going to skip straight past the content and look at links. The article leads with Ptychozoon intermedium, the Philippine parachute gecko. Naturally, pedant that I am, I wanted to find the original description of this gecko (which wasn't cited in the Nature piece). I turned to BioNames, and got the name but no literature. A bit of Googling revealed that Taylor originally used the name Ptychozoon intermedia (note the ending "a" rather than "um", sigh). OK, BioNames has Ptychozoon intermedia, plus the original description:

Edward H Taylor (1915) New species of Philippine Lizards. Philippine Journal of Science Manila Sect 10(D): 89–109. http://biostor.org/reference/129464

Obviously I need to improve BioNames to handle multiple variants of the species name. Finding this article took a little tracking down, not quite on the level of uncovering a spy, perhaps, but sometimes the amount of detective work involved in tracking down taxonomic literature is tiresome.

To continue with the theme, in my experience when reading taxonomic papers the list of literature cited is often simply listed as a text string without a link to the place you can find it. This is in marked contrast to papers in other subjects (say, phylogenetics), where most if not all the literature cited is linked. For the Nature article on Edward Taylor here are the references cited:

Reference list:

1. Brown, R. M., Ferner, J. W. & Diesmos, A. C. Herpetologica 53, 357–373 (1997).
2. Webb, R. G. Herpetologica 34, 422–425 (1978).
3. Inger, R. F. Fieldiana Zool. 33, 183–531 (1954).
4. Savage, J. M. The Amphibians and Reptiles of Costa Rica (Univ. Chicago. Press, 2002).
5. Merrill, E. D. Science 101, 401 (1945).
6. Diesmos, A. C., Brown, R. M. & Gee, G. V. A. Sylvatrop 13, 63–80 (2003).
7. Taylor, E. H., Leonard, A. B., Smith, H. M. & Pisani, G. R. Monogr. Mus. Nat. Hist. Univ. Kansas 4, 1–160 (1975).
8. Taylor, E. H. The Caecilians of the World (Univ. Kansas Press, 1968).
9. Brown, R. M. et al. Check List 8, 469–490 (2012).
10. Brown, R. M., Siler, C. D., Diesmos, A. C. & Alcala, A. C. Herpetol. Monogr. 23, 1–44 (2009).

Nature has added DOIs to two of them:

1. Brown, R. M., Ferner, J. W. & Diesmos, A. C. Herpetologica 53, 357–373 (1997).
2. Webb, R. G. Herpetologica 34, 422–425 (1978).
3. Inger, R. F. Fieldiana Zool. 33, 183–531 (1954).
4. Savage, J. M. The Amphibians and Reptiles of Costa Rica (Univ. Chicago. Press, 2002).
5. Merrill, E. D. Science 101, 401 (1945). DOI: 10.1126/science.101.2623.355
6. Diesmos, A. C., Brown, R. M. & Gee, G. V. A. Sylvatrop 13, 63–80 (2003).
7. Taylor, E. H., Leonard, A. B., Smith, H. M. & Pisani, G. R. Monogr. Mus. Nat. Hist. Univ. Kansas 4, 1–160 (1975).
8. Taylor, E. H. The Caecilians of the World (Univ. Kansas Press, 1968).
9. Brown, R. M. et al. Check List 8, 469–490 (2012).
10. Brown, R. M., Siler, C. D., Diesmos, A. C. & Alcala, A. C. Herpetol. Monogr. 23, 1–44 (2009). DOI: 10.1655/09-037.1

So 8 of 10 references have no link (I'm ignoring the ISI link for the first reference). So, I spent a little time fussing with BioStor, JSTOR, and Google and came up with some more:

1. Brown, R. M., Ferner, J. W. & Diesmos, A. C. Herpetologica 53, 357–373 (1997). JSTOR: 3893345
2. Webb, R. G. Herpetologica 34, 422–425 (1978). JSTOR: 3891519
3. Inger, R. F. Fieldiana Zool. 33, 183–531 (1954). BioStor: 99995
4. Savage, J. M. The Amphibians and Reptiles of Costa Rica (Univ. Chicago. Press, 2002).
5. Merrill, E. D. Science 101, 401 (1945). DOI: 10.1126/science.101.2623.355
6. Diesmos, A. C., Brown, R. M. & Gee, G. V. A. Sylvatrop 13, 63–80 (2003).
7. Taylor, E. H., Leonard, A. B., Smith, H. M. & Pisani, G. R. Monogr. Mus. Nat. Hist. Univ. Kansas 4, 1–160 (1975). DOI: 10.5962/bhl.title.4250
8. Taylor, E. H. The Caecilians of the World (Univ. Kansas Press, 1968).
9. Brown, R. M. et al. Check List 8, 469–490 (2012). PDF
10. Brown, R. M., Siler, C. D., Diesmos, A. C. & Alcala, A. C. Herpetol. Monogr. 23, 1–44 (2009). DOI: 10.1655/09-037.1

Not perfect, but better. My concern is that the lack of linked literature citations simply seems to confirm taxonomy's status as an intellectual backwater. In other subjects the reader can quickly visit the literature cited and navigate the web of papers relevant to the article. But in taxonomy we have to resort to Google and/or specialised tools such as JSTOR, BioStor and BHL to find the literature. This needs to change, unless we are happy with taxonomy being a digital backwater.