David J. Patterson

David Joseph Patterson is a Northern Irish taxonomist specializing in protozoa and the use of taxonomy in biodiversity informatics.

Early life and education

David Joseph Patterson was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland on 19 April 1950 to Doris Mary and Samuel Patterson, with one elder brother and a sister. Father of Alice Mia Vørs Patterson, Daniel Kieran Patterson, and William Patterson. He was educated at Belmont Primary, Strandtown and Grosvenor High schools in Belfast. He obtained his Bachelor of Science with first-class honours at Queen's University Belfast in 1971.

Career

David Patterson obtained a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Bristol in 1976, where he was later employed. He obtained his Doctor of Science in 1990 from Queen's University, Belfast. In 1993 he moved to the University of Sydney in Australia where he became Head of the School of Biological Sciences. In 2004, he moved to the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole where he helped to establish the Encyclopedia of Life project with responsibility for the informatics component, basing EOL on the model developed with the micro*scope project. From 2012-2014 he was a Research Professor at Arizona State University; and also was Professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and an Emeritus Professor of the University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia. As a taxonomist, his primary interests were in the diversity of protozoa and the evolution of protists. He and his co-workers described about 250 new taxa. David Patterson was awarded the Thomas Henry Huxley prize and the Scientific Medal of the Zoological Society of London; has been Secretary of the British Section of the Society of Protozoologists; President of the International Society for Evolutionary Protistology; and Vice-President of the Society of Protozoology. He served as a member of the International Commission for Zoological Nomenclature, of the Editorial Committee for Algae of the International Association for Plant Taxonomy, of the Executive Committee of the International Union of Biological Sciences, and of the Scientific Committee of the World Data System.
He has published approximately 200 peer-reviewed papers including several books throughout his career. Initial interests in ion physiology, volume regulation, and contractile vacuoles shifted to ultrastructural studies, a technique that reshaped the understanding of protist diversity, in turn being further enriched through comparative molecular studies. With Guy Brugerolle, he introduced his concept that clades of protists could usefully be identified by the complement and arrangement of organelles - that is their ultrastructural identity. He later used this concept along with the rationale of transformed cladistics to redefine the diversity of clades among eukaryotes. This simplified the challenge of establishing a complete phylogeny for eukaryotes by providing a list of the clades among which relatedness was to be established.
In the mid-1980's, Patterson focussed his efforts on free-living heterotrophic flagellates because they were poorly known and were not being actively investigated. Two areas of research were impeded because of the lack of awareness of flagellate diversity. The first was with the emerging concept of Microbial Food Webs that was transforming appreciation of the dynamics of ocean ecosystems - itself critical to the international Joint Global Ocean Flux Study targeting a better understanding of carbon fluxes and global warming. Secondly, 9+2 based flagella appeared with or shortly after the origin of eukaryotes, an understanding of the variety of flagellate diversity was expected to create better insights into eukaryotic origins and evolution. With co-workers, this led to recognition of new domains of protistan diversity - such as stramenopiles, alveolates, and the excavates - robustly defined by reference to evolutionary innovations, then a rare practice in protist taxonomy.
Patterson explored the emerging and largely theoretical concept that most microbes should have a universal distribution, initially articulated by Lourens Baas Becking, and refreshed by Tom Fenchel and Bland Finlay. Applying standardized sampling, documentation, and reporting protocols, to communities in marine, freshwater, and extreme sites, in Pacific and Atlantic locations, northern and southern hemispheres, in coastal habitats and deep ocean sediments, he and co-workers refuted the hypothesis that the taxonomic composition of communities of free-living flagellates were determined by geographic factors. This insight eliminated the need for local catalogues and expertise, accelerating taxonomic, phylogenetic, and ecological studies involving flagellates.
Latterly, his interests shifted to embedding taxonomic expertise in tools that manage biodiversity information. He led the implementation team of the Encyclopedia of Life project, was subsequently appointed Senior Taxononomist to the project, and as adviser to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a coPI of the Data Conservancy and of the NSF-funded Global Names project, and member of the Plazi team. He was a prime mover of the Global Names Architecture project.
Taxa named after him include Pattersoniella vitiphila, Foissner, 1987; Protoopalina pattersonii Delvinquier, 1995; Nuclearia pattersonii, Nerad, Silberman, et al., 2008; Pseudovorticella pattersoni, Sun, Ji, Warren and Song 2009 and Stephanopogon pattersoni Lee, Miller and Simpson, 2014.
Following retirement from the academic world, he has written for parents who seek to promote thoughtfulness in 5-9 year old children.

Taxa described

Actinophrys salsuginosa
Actinophrys tauryanini
Adriamonas peritocrescens
Adriamonas
Amphidiniopsis korewalensis
Amphidinium boggayum
Amphidinium corrugatum
Amphidinium mootonorum
Amphidinium yuroogurrum
Ancyromonas melba
Ancyromonas sinistrae
Anehmia
Anehmia exotica
Anisonema glaciale
Apusomonas australiensis
Astasia skvortzovi
Axodines
Barthelona
Barthelona vulgaris
Bodo cephaloporus
Bodo cygnus
Bodo platyrhynchus
Bodo saliens
Bordnamonas
Bordnamonas tropicana
Cabra matta
Cabra
Caecitellus parvulus
Caecitellus
Cafeteria
Cafeteria ligulifera
Cafeteria minuta
Cafeteria roenbergensis
Carpediemonas bialata
Carpediemonas
Carpediemonas membranifera
Centroheliozoa
Cercomonas granulatus
Chlamydaster fimbriatus
Ciliophrys azurina
Clautriavia cavus
Colpodella turpis
Colpodella unguis
Cristamonadida
Cryptaulax elegans
Dinema dimorphum
Dinema inaequale
Dinema litorale
Dinema maculata
Dinema platysomum
Dinema validum
Dinematomonas inaequale
Dinematomonas litorale
Dinematomonas maculata
Dinematomonas valida
Dingensia angusta
Dingensia
Diplonema ambulator
Diplonema metabolicum
Dolium
Dolium sedentarium
Eufolliculina uhligi
Eumycetes
Fromentella granulosa
Fromentella
Glissandra innuerende
Glissandra
Goniomonas amphinema
Goniomonas pacifica
Gyrodinium oblongum
Heteronema exaratum
Heteronema larseni
Heteronema pterbica
Heteronema splendens
Heteronema vittatum
Jakoba incarcerata
Jakoba libera
Jakoba
Jenningsia curvicauda
Jenningsia deflexum
Jenningsia furcatum
Jenningsia fusiforme
Jenningsia glabrum
Jenningsia granuliferum
Jenningsia kupfferi
Jenningsia limax
Jenningsia macer
Jenningsia macrostomum
Jenningsia nigrum
Jenningsia sacculus
Kamera lens
Kamera
Kiitoksia kaloista
Macappella
Massisteria
Massisteria marina
Mastigamoeba psammobia
Mastigamoeba punctachora
Mastigamoeba schizophrenia
Metafolliculina ballerina
Metopion fluens
Metopion
Metromonas grandis
Metromonas
Metromonas simplex
Ministeria marisola
Ministeria
Monotrichomonas
Monotrichomonas
Notosolenus adamus
Notosolenus alatellus
Notosolenus brothernis
Notosolenus hamelini
Notosolenus hemicircularis
Notosolenus lashue
Notosolenus mediocanellatus
Notosolenus navicula
Notosolenus ostium
Notosolenus pyriforme
Notosolenus scutulum
Notosolenus steini
Notosolenus tamanduensis
Notosolenus triangularis
Notosolenus urceolatus
Nuclearia flavescens
Nuclearia flavocapsulata
Nuclearia leuckarti
Nuclearia radians
Nuclearia ruber
Palustrimonas yorkeensis
Peranema dolichonema
Peranema dolichonema
Peranema macrostoma
Percolomonas cosmopolitus
Percolomonas cuspidata
Percolomonas descissus
Percolomonas elephas
Percolomonas
Percolomonas membranifera
Percolomonas pyriformis
Percolomonas salinus
Percolomonas similis
Percolomonas spinosus
Percolomonas sulcatus
Petalomonas boadicea
Petalomonas calycimonoides
Petalomonas christeni
Petalomonas compressa
Petalomonas intortus
Petalomonas iugosus
Petalomonas labrum
Petalomonas marginalis
Petalomonas minor
Petalomonas physaloides
Petalomonas planus
Petalomonas poosilla
Petalomonas quinquecarinata
Petalomonas raiula
Petalomonas spinifera
Petalomonas virgatus
Phyllomitus granulatus
Phyllomitus vesiculosus
Platychilomonas
Platychilomonas psammobia
Plaustrimonas
Pleurostomum turgidum
Ploeotia adhaerens
Ploeotia adhaerens
Ploeotia amygdala
Ploeotia azurina
Ploeotia corrugata
Ploeotia decipiens
Ploeotia discoides
Ploeotia heracleum
Ploeotia laminae
Ploeotia longifilum
Ploeotia obliqua
Ploeotia oblonga
Ploeotia plumosa
Ploeotia pseudanisonema
Ploeotia punctata
Ploeotia robusta
Ploeotia scrobiculata
Ploeotia tasmanica
Ploeotia tenuis
Protaspis gemmifera
Protaspis obliqua
Protaspis tegere
Protaspis verrucosa
Pseudoperanema dolichonema
Pseudophyllomitus apiculatus
Pseudophyllomitus granulatus
Pseudophyllomitus vesiculosis
Pteridomonas danica
Quasibodo
Quasibodo laughtoni
Ramicristates
Rhabdomonas mirabilis
Rhinodinium broomeensis
Rhinodinium
Rhizomonas setigera
Rhynchobodo simius
Sciviamonas
Sciviamonas terricola
Sloomycetes
Slopalinida
Sphenomonas alburiae
Stramenochromes
Stramenopiles
Tetradimorpha pterbica
Thecamonas filosa
Thecamonas
Thecamonas mutabilis
Thecamonas trahens
Toshiba
Toshiba vorax
Trimastix inaequalis
Urceolus cornutus
''Urceolus costatus''