The inventory of natural diversity

Abstract

How many species of living organisms are known and have been named to date? How many species are still awaiting discovery? The systematist is often asked such questions, especially in these years of growing sensibility towards the tremendous decrease of biological diversity experienced on earth. Obtaining an estimate of existing diversity is a necessary step towards understanding the amount and value of the natural wealth we are currently destroying. It is not by chance that these questions repeatedly emerge from the pages of the most comprehensive review on biodiversity and its loss crisis (Wilson, 1988a). That such detailed estimates of biodiversity are gaining increasing attention because of their impact on conservation issues is probably a major opportunity for taxonomy to obtain more adequate consideration than that enjoyed until recently. Taxonomy contributes to conservation at the most elementary level; it is easy (but important) to recall that no species can be protected unless identified and named: bad taxonomy may kill! (Daugherty et al., 1990; May, 1990; Heywood, 1991). But systematics can also contribute in a more sophisticated and professional way to the adoption of more adequate conservation measures, as exemplified by several recent approaches to measuring biodiversity in terms of cladistic relatedness of the species involved (e.g. Altschul and Lipman, 1990; Williams, Humphries and Vane-Wright, 1991).

Hardly any aspect of life is more characteristic than its almost unlimited diversity No two individuals in the sexually reproducing populations are the same, no two higher taxa, nor any associations, and so ad infinitum. Wherever we look, we find uniqueness, and uniqueness spells diversity

E. Mayr (1982a, p.133)