On September 4th, Science journal published an avian research paper written by Xin Lu, a Professor from the School of Life Sciences at Wuhan University. The paper, named “Hot Genome Leaves Natural Histories Cold”, mainly discusses the condition of natural history research under the hot trend of avian genome sequence studies.
Recently, the Avian Phylogenomics Consortium has announced a plan to generate genome sequences for more than 10,000 bird species in the next 5 years. The news is highly inspiring for global researchers who long to understand avian life history, ecology and behavior for many years.
However, as Professor Lu Xin pointed out in his article, in contrast to the hot genome studies trend, natural history research is still a relatively undeveloped field, despite the fact it provides crucial information to interpret the patterns of genome sequences. Acquiring the existing natural historical information about a limited range of bird species has already taken more than 150 years, which means we are unlikely to collect enough natural historical information to interpret the findings of the genome sequence plan in the following 5 years.
So why is natural history research left out in the cold? Professor Lu suggests two possible reasons. One could be that time-consuming natural history studies have few opportunities to get published in high–impact factor journals in the current academic evaluation system, which forces many researchers to turn to genome sequence studies. Another likely reason is that many young people are losing their passion for fieldwork due to an increasingly urbanized and digitalized lifestyle.As a matter of fact, Professor Lu himself has been dedicating years to fieldwork. The article demonstrates his strategic thinking about the development of biology as a discipline form the perspective of his own experience.
At the end of his paper, Professor Lu appeals to all researchers to get more involved in the study of natural history, rather than resume to supporting the ever-booming genome sequence studies. He concludes that science should enrich human’s knowledge about nature. His view resonates within the worldwide biological studies community.
(Rewritten by Yedan Tang, edited by Diana & Sijia Hu)
Source:Hot genome leaves natural histories cold,Written byXinLu,Edited by Jennifer Sills, Science, Vol.349
