I just read Krell's (2004) interesting article about Parataxonomy, a organism sorting method based on the identification of so called recognizable taxonomic units (RTU) instead of 'real' species.
Simplification of taxonomy is also very common in paleontology (-related) investigations.
Yes I confess I also submitted studies without clarifying my taxonomic concepts, to repent I enclose a jpg of what I formerly regarded as Neogloboquadrina pachyderma Ehrenberg 1861
After reading Krell I wondered how good actually taxonomic documentation in the current literature of my former discipline today is. Therefore, I decided to perform a quick test on the 2007 Volumes of Marine Micropaleontology. I scanned 40 articles (surely not enough, but I just wanted to have a quick impression) and the result confirmed more or less my bad expectations.
Only 2 articles included a complete systematics section where the species concepts have been described including synonymy lists. At least 15 Articles provided a species list in the appendix, 6 of these lists included references to the original reference of the treated taxon. 1 article used DNA analysis.
However, the majority of articles (22) used species names but did not include any taxonomic documentation. And this was a bit surprising to me. Three of these articles included electronical supplements with species lists - unavailable for readers of the printed version. Nine of these articles at least included one or more references as taxonomic key.
But still, more than 25% of all scanned publications used species names but did not document their taxonomic concepts at all! So there surely is a lack of proper methodological documentation.
Reference:
Krell(2004): Parataxonomy vs. taxonomy in biodiversity studies-pitfalls and applicability of 'morphospecies' sorting. Biodiversity and Conservation Vol. 13, p.795-812.
