About me and my work

The fossil record of arthropods has been my main interest since I started studying biology. Using various morphological tools, I try to gather as much information as possible from the, often small, fossils.

Taxonomy is a big part of my work. Although often treated as a field of science, in my opinion, from a conceptual viewpoint taxonomy does not qualify as such and should not not be seen as synonymous to systematics. Biological systematics tries to answer questions about the relationships between groups of organisms; taxonomy, on the other side, is based on man-made conventions (ICZN, IAPT, etc.). Taxonomy should try to describe the latest progress in biosystematics, whilst also providing a stable referencing system. The hierarchical ranks of the Linnean system prove to be an inefficient tool for this purpose and – if misunderstood – can lead to stable but very arbitrary classification systems. As a consequence of this, I try to avoid Linnean ranks wherever I can.

The use of free and open software is one of my big ambitions. I try to exclusively use free software to handle data and prepare manuscripts. Inkscape, GIMP, Libre Office, Zotero, QGIS, CombineZP, Drishti and Blender are the applications that I use the most. For data analyses and creating plots, I try to use R, wherever possible. Since some time ago, I use Linux on all of my personal devices – and since then never regretted it.