Saving Systematics: Mission to a Little-Known Planet

An exhaustive, planetary-scale account of species—and their characters—is earth's last, vast unexplored frontier

“How much do we know about life on this little-known planet beneath our feet, the planet earth? We have not even approached the end of cataloguing the creatures that share the earth with us: and this should be the very first step in our knowledge.”

—Howard Ensign Evans, Life on a Little-Known Planet

A rainforest in Chiapas, Mexico, for which, like habitats around the world, there exists no inventory of species or description their characters. Source: Pixabay; derivative work from Wikipedia. CC-Zero.

When Linnaeus set out to discover, diagnose and document the world’s species, he began one of the greatest scientific projects of all time.  Greater in scale than he could have imagined, for he had no way of knowing that species numbered in the millions, far exceeding the ten thousand or so that he impressively named himself.

Three developments indicate that the time for this centuries-old goal of an all-out, planetary-scale, exhaustive accounting of earth species has arrived. First, a recognition of the accelerated rate of species extinction, and associated degradation and diminishment of natural habitats around the globe, make it obvious that a huge number of species—millions of them—must be discovered soon or remain forever unknown to science.  This new urgency is reinforced by astronomy and space exploration which have made it clear, along with interstellar distances, that we are unlikely to set foot on a comparably species-rich planet any time soon, if ever.  The diversity of species, their characters and history, is a frontier best explored at home.  Besides, even if we found another planet, earthlike in the sense of having millions of diverse species, our first impulse would be to inventory its life forms.  And our second to compare them and their history to those of earth.  It would be more than a little embarrassing had we passed up the chance to do a good job exploring life on our home planet, when we could have.

Second, theoretical advances made by and since Hennig have transformed phylogenetic studies from informed speculation to explicitly rigorous hypothesis testing.  We can reconstruct the amazing, multi-billion-year history of life on earth by careful description, comparison, and analysis of species and their characters.  But, like a vast jig-saw puzzle, the big picture of evolution is only revealed in proportion to the number of pieces of the puzzle we possess.  So, once again it is a now-or-never proposition whether we explore and gather evidence of earth’s diverse life forms before millions have disappeared.

And third, technological advances, from air and sea travel to communications, DNA sequencing, and computational power have tamed what seemed, just a few generations ago, an impossibly massive task that would take centuries to complete, if it could be done at all.  But such constraints are in the past and no insurmountable excuses remain. The time for a worldwide, exhaustive inventory has finally arrived—and just in time to avoid massive losses of data, information and knowledge.

When Linnaeus set out to discover the world’s species, such a goal was far more audacious than NASA’s current plans to visit Mars.  In spite of great limitations in his age, he nonetheless made incredible progress.  Not only enumerating thousands of the most commonly encountered species of plants and animals, but also creating the foundations of a system, so potent and flexible, that it has proven capable of growing, with appropriate tweaks, along an explosion of knowledge.  Theoretical, methodological and technological advances mean that everything is in place to rapidly complete the first-pass comprehensive inventory that was far beyond Linnaeus’ reach.  If we can find the will, and commit the resources, we can complete such an inventory of millions of species in just a few decades.  The immediate and enduring benefits of such an inventory are fantastic from monitoring conservation progress to probing the complexities of ecosystems, completing the story of evolution, fueling a biomimicry revolution, and enriching our intellectual lives by introducing us to the history of diversification of life of which Homo sapiens is one among perhaps ten million outcomes.

Instead of boldly reengaging with Linnaeus’ historic project, we allow taxonomy to be marginalized, trivialized, and denigrated. When it should be ramping up to a global-scale enterprise, we permit it to be minimized as a pedantic identification service based primarily on just one source of data and a source of estimates of phylogenetic relationships spit out by computer algorithms rather than deep, detailed studies of the wondrous characters that make species fascinating in the first place. 

We permit taxonomy to be treated as if it existed as a service for others, denying the truth that it is, pursued as an independent science, as intellectually-challenging, rigorously scientific, and fantastically audacious as any other and filled with spectacular and unexpected discoveries.  Applying taxonomic knowledge is necessary for every field in or related to the life sciences, but it is not sufficient for science:  the goal, as in every fundamental science, is to explore and discover for the reward of knowledge and understanding alone. 

Let’s pretend that there were some easy method, some DNA-barcode-like procedure, to recognize elements of the periodic table in any circumstance, and that it were possible using this method to detect which elements were combined in any chemical compound.  For countless practical purposes, that would be sufficient knowledge of the elements, but it would not satisfy a chemist.  A chemist wants to know what makes each element or compound unique, such as molecular weights for the former and emergent properties for the latter.  Fundamental chemistry’s goal is to learn what elements and compounds exist, what attributes each has, and, in the case of compounds, how they come into existence.  Chemistry is based on a curiosity-driven exploration of the physical world in a quest for knowledge, not just identifying elements and, in the case of compounds, their relationships to one another.  Were all this possible, no right-minded person would advocate that chemistry be reduced only to identifying elements, as incredibly important as that service is, but would insist that, as part of our basic understanding of the world, that fundamental chemistry be pursued.  Yet, those who care only about meeting their own needs to identify species are eager to deny support to the one science capable of determining what species exist, what properties make each unique, how they are related, and, at the granularity of individual characters, the story of how they came to be.    

Shame on colleagues whose selfish goals blind them to the intellectual grandeur of systematics.  Shame on institutions, both museums and universities, who sheepishly follow rather than lead.  Shame on those who say they are devoted to conservation, but care so little about species that they deny funds needed to learn what makes each remarkably unique.  And shame on taxonomists, too, for going along with the crowd, for compromising when courage is called for, and for failing to be undeterrable advocates for their own science at a time when it is under assault.

Let’s be clear about what I mean by a species inventory, because it has two inferences.  Obviously, it represents a commitment to explore the globe, discovering, documenting, and mapping the distribution of every kind of living thing, plant, animal, or microbe.  But it is more.  Much more.  It is also a commitment to exhaustively explore, describe, and interpret the characters that make each species a unique kind and that are indicia of each species unique position in the tree of life.  Inventory does not mean a list of names or a database of DNA sequences.  It is the most exhaustive accounting of characters, species, and clades possible in the time remaining.

When I served as division director for environmental biology at the NSF, we created the Planetary Biodiversity Inventory projects in an effort to encourage teams of experts and institutions to work together to accelerate the discovery and description of species.  Funded projects were remarkably successful, attaining impressive goals on short timetables and, in so doing, demonstrating the feasibility of such coordinated efforts.  PBIs, unfortunately, are no longer being funded.  But the precedent has been set, the model proven. Teamwork can be an accelerant, refuting the claim that there are too many species to make a complete inventory feasible and, therefore, to speed things up, we ought to limit our knowledge to molecular data.

Ecologists and conservationists who whine about a “taxonomic impediment”—that is, the inability to identify most species—eagerly accept the results of information-impoverished methods, like DNA barcodes, when they could have access to deep knowledge of species had they chosen to support taxonomy in the past—or if they would support it now.  Too many biologists want the ability to tell species apart without sharing resources with taxonomy or allowing taxon experts the latitude to do the job right. We urgently need more ecological knowledge, too. But, I do not hear the same voices calling to dumb-down ecology, to lower its standards and information content, in order to speed it up.  As we face the prospect of losing the majority of species over the next two to three centuries, this is no time to cut corners.  We have just one chance to inventory the diversity of life on our planet; one opportunity to gather evidence of the astonishing history of evolution, before it is erased; one choice whether to create a legacy of knowledge for a planet undergoing rapid and irreversible changes.

It is time to rebut attacks on the integrity and aims of taxonomy; to resist a movement that would restrict us to a single data source; to push back against forces seeking to reduce taxonomy to a mere service; and to engage in species exploration on a scale never previously imagined or made possible.  A species inventory is a project as profound, and as great or greater in its direct impact on humankind, as any other example of “big science.”  If we fail to make knowledge of earth species as complete as possible; if we fail to make natural history collections a reasonably complete representation of the diversity of species; if we drop the ball as the last generation with access to millions of species, failing to document their improbable characters and amazing history, then we shall rightly be seen as fools by future generations.  Who would diddle with technology in labs as billions of years of history are erased in the field?  Who would ignore gaining knowledge of diverse organisms that make our own lives possible?  Who would focus on one source of evidence when there are other, in some ways more informative, sources?  And, who would choose ignorance over knowledge, when knowledge is free for the taking?

This is not a time to play bio-politics, to follow fads, or to allow taxonomy to be bullied by those with limited vision and understanding of its mission.  This is not a time to timidly follow, but to boldly lead.  This is not a time to settle for estimates of species based on measures of genetic similarity; it is a time for gathering as much evidence as can be had and insisting on testable hypotheses.  This is not a time to abandon centuries-old goals, but to reengage them while bringing to bear every relevant technology.  This is not a time to accept DNA barcodes in the place of richly detailed descriptions of the novel and complex characters of species. 

This is a time for clarity of vision, courage of purpose, and take-no-hostage leadership.  As the last generation with the option to explore species and preserve evidence of phylogenetic history, we shoulder an awesome responsibility to rise to the occasion.  What humans ultimately know about their own heritage and origins, about the biosphere upon which their lives depend, and about the diversity and history of life on the most species-rich planet in the known universe, depends entirely upon what we do next.  Will we find the clarity and courage to lead, or continue to conform to fads and funding fashions?  Will we reassert taxonomy as an independent science and recommit to its inspiring agenda, or continue to sit by as its needs are ignored and marginalized by those thinking no bigger or farther than the immediate problems in front of them?  Identifying species is critically important to ecology, conservation, agriculture, and many other endeavors, but such identifications are trivial in comparison to the challenge at hand.  Happily, by pursuing taxonomy’s mission identifications are not only made possible as a by-product, but species identified have greater meaning being based on hypotheses and a synthesis of evidence.

We urgently need leaders of vision and courage:  individual taxonomists, funding agencies, professional societies, and institutions committed to taxonomic education, research and collections.  Our science is being dissed by experimental biologists who do not understand, recognize or appreciate the rigor, aims and implications of modern taxonomy; who do not see that technology biases, useful in meeting short-term needs, risk enormous and irreparable losses of knowledge in the long-run. 

The biodiversity crisis, and the coming mass extinction, should logically place taxonomy center stage. Its long, distinguished history, its recent theoretical and technological advances, have prepared it for a leading role in an unfolding tragedy worthy of Shakespeare’s best story-telling.  These advances have readied taxonomy for the tasks of exploring, describing, understanding, naming, and phylogenetically classifying millions of earth species that now face a perilous and uncertain future.  Taxonomists know what needs to be done to preserve specimens and deep knowledge of life and its history—and how to do it efficiently, rapidly, and to a high standard of excellence.  They only need our endorsement of their unique agenda, resources to modernize their research infrastructure, and support to implement their vision. After centuries, taxonomy’s time has arrived.  It is uniquely appropriate to the moment, to confronting one of the greatest challenges humankind has ever faced. Let’s make certain that it is unobstructed and properly resourced to meet the challenge.  

Reference

Evans, Howard E. 1968. Life on a Little-Known Planet. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York.