The Study of Species in the Era of Biodiversity: A Tale of
Contents
1. Israel cooperation and the Centro Euromediterraneo per il Cambiamento Climatico the European Network of Excellence Marine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning MARBEF funded by the European Union the United Nations Environmental Programme Regional Activity Centre for Specially Protected Areas Tunis The only projects aimed at performing taxonomy though expired long ago and were a PEET project of the NSF of the USA and a FIRB project of the Italian Ministry of University and Scientific and Technological Research References 1 Boero F Zoology in the era of biodiversity Ital J Zool 2009 76 239 239 2 Darwin C On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life John Murray London UK 1859 3 Bebber D P Marriott F H C Gaston K J Harris S A Scotland R W Predicting unknown species number using discovery curves Proc R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2007 274 1651 1658 Diversity 2010 2 125 10 11 2 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 On 22 Piraino S Fanelli G Boero F Variability of species roles in marine communities change of paradigms for conservation priorities Mar Biol 2002 140 1067 1074 Faber M Proops J Evolution Time Production and the Environment Springer Verlag Berlin Germany 1993 Maddox J On the widespread distrust for science Nature 1995 378 435 438 Boero F Light after dark t2. institutions are willing to pay for it ISI was not the first to sell scientific information however since 1864 for instance the Zoological Record gathers all the articles and books published on animals in a given year dividing them by phylum and indexing them through a multitude of entries first of all the names of new species Long before the advent of ISI there were journals doing this also for botany and for mathematics These sciences thus were not a fruitful market for ISI since the niche of information Diversity 2010 2 118 providers was filled already and it would have been a waste of time trying to sell what was already available from other sources Covering all scientific journals furthermore is expensive ISI thus ranked them according to their citations in the scientific literature calculating their Impact Factor IF If the papers of a journal receive almost no citations within two years after publication the journal has no or very low impact and it is not worth while being covered ISI thus chose what to cover and automatically the rest was considered as having no scientific impact according to the criteria designed by ISI itself It is somehow not surprising that the journals of Museums the core of taxonomic literature did not receive an Impact Factor The information they contain was given by the Zoological Record and by other bibliographic repertoires dedicated to taxonomy and so their deliberate omission did n
3. not only biblical it is a key biological trait However it is impossible to increase own fitness go and multiply without breaking the limitats in the consumption of natural resources the resouces of the Garden All growths do have a limit even ours These considerations apply well to terrestrial environments whereas in the oceans we are still hunters and gatherers Natural populations in fact are almost gone in terrestrial ecosystems whereas they are still relatively healthy in the oceans so to withstand industrial exploitation by fisheries This is not going to last for a long time though and we have already impoverished the last Eden the World Ocean so much that we are shifting from fisheries to aquaculture as we did on land long time ago passing from hunting and gathering to agriculture This is happening for a very simple reason the natural populations of marine species are overexploited and do not provide sufficient goods for our well being With aquaculture however we further impoverish the seas since we rear mostly carnivorous species and we feed them with smaller fish that are drawn from natural populations we are scratching the bottom of the barrel of nature 21 Furthermore we obtain fish with extremely destructive tools that destroy not only non target species such as marine mammals and reptiles but also the very habitats of the fish we use as a resource Habitat destruction is probably the most pervasive threat to biologi
4. ranges between 10 and 15 million but just two million have been named and the answer to the basic question on the number of species inhabiting the planet is very far from being answered see 3 for estimates of future discovery trends Furthermore a name is just a label knowing it does not imply that we really know about the named species Once a species is named and it phenotype described we should know about its variability and its life cycle define its ecological niche understand its role within communities and ecosystems For the greatest majority of the described species however we know just the name and how the adults look like Our ignorance is enormous both in terms of what are the species and of what they do 4 The exploration of biodiversity was a primordial urge for our species in most cases stemming from simple curiosity but in 1992 the Rio de Janeiro Convention on Biological Diversity agreed that we are leading species to extinction and habitats to destruction and that some measures had to be taken Man in this vision is part of Nature and cannot survive without it if we destroy Nature we destroy the premises for our very existence After the Rio Convention the exploration of biodiversity became more imperative than ever since we cannot defend or manage something if we do not know it It is clear however that we cannot wait to know all species and everything about each one of them before we can do something to preserve bio
5. taxonomy based on phenotypes is in such distress Both the public and the decision makers if asked about biological diversity think about species And species for them are clearly phenotypes So it is obvious that the knowledge of species should be a stringent priority for the countries that signed the Rio Convention As a matter of fact huge amounts of money were and still are devoted to the exploration of biodiversity but it was the scientific community that decided how to use them through advisory committees made of scientists representing the scientific community that recommend measures to politicians and functionaires Politicians asked the scientific community to face the problem of biodiversity conservation and the outcome is that taxonomy is almost extinct 7 8 I used the word stupidity but maybe there are other words to define how the matter was dealt with by both decision makers and their advisors 5 ISI and Traditional Taxonomy The Institute for Scientific Information ISI was founded in 1960 and since then it has sold information to scientists the generators of scientific knowledge Scientists in fact cannot devote all of their time consulting thousands of scientific journals to be up to date in their field since they would have no time for practiced research Indexing all articles from all journals so to allow to extract the ones that might be of interest for a particular scientist is a precious service and scientific
6. 2 121 have to be collected identified and then barcoded The identification of the first barcoded specimen however has to be made by a human being based on the morphology of the phenotype Are we sure that without trained taxonomists the barcoded specimens will have been identified properly in the first place And then once we have barcoded what we know how do we think to find what we do not know The barcode concept is very helpful for identification and is leading to the discovery of many sibling species but taxonomy is not identification And we will always need taxonomists to name the new species to clear the synonimies etc The barcoding of life is a strong help to identification but without integration with traditional taxonomy it will be probably a poor tool 15 16 Of course however this technologically advanced solution to the problem of species identification is attracting lots of funding It is much more scientific to identify specimens with machines than doing it by simply looking at them 9 Another Face of Diversity Functional diversity is rather limited if compared with morphological diversity The same elements e g nucleotides or biochemical pathways can be assembled by nature so to yield to much different structures that anyway are based on indentical principles and perform similar functions The genetic specifications of very complex achievements of evolution like animal photoreceptors are coded f
7. Diversity 2010 2 115 126 doi 10 3390 d2010115 J e diversity ISSN 1424 2818 www mdpi com journal diversity Communication The Study of Species in the Era of Biodiversity A Tale of Stupidity Ferdinando Boero Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Biologiche ed Ambientali DiSTeBA Universita del Salento 73100 Lecce Italy E Mail boero unisalento it Received 16 December 2009 Accepted 19 January 2010 Published 22 January 2010 Abstract Research policies ensuing from the Convention on Biological Diversity made huge funds available to study biodiversity These were mostly dedicated to projects aimed at providing services to taxonomy via information and technology or to develop modern i e molecular approaches to taxonomy Traditional taxonomy was overly neglected and is in serious distress all over the world It is argued that both novel and traditional ways to study biodiversity are essential and that the demise of traditional taxonomy based on phenotypes in the era of biodiversity is the result of an unwise policy mainly fostered by portions of the scientific community that aim at taking total advantage of the funds dedicated to the study of biodiversity Keywords biodiversity traditional taxonomy molecular taxonomy information and technology research policies 1 On a Mission from God The most popular definitions of biodiversity range from genetic to population species community habitat ecosyste
8. Such discoveries cannot be predicted in standard projects Model organisms are chosen just for their exceptional features such as gigantic chromosomes or fixed number of cells or huge neurons Another important feature of model organisms is their thriving under laboratory conditions so to be readily available for experimentation The organisms that are easily kept in the laboratory however are not so many the rest of biodiversity especially animals is difficult to rear Experimental organisms thus are exceptional under many respects and we are inferring generalities from exceptions The case of ontogeny reversal in some Hydrozoa teaches us that the diversity of functions might be unexpectedly higher than we presume having based our generalities on a very limited portion of diversity Diversity 2010 2 122 The exploration of genetic diversity showed that with a limited number of genes nature can construct much different organisms Genetics is not all what diversity is about epigenetics playing a fundamental role in determining the way organisms are built and function 19 This of course does not mean that genes are not important it only suggests that there are no shortcuts to the understanding of diversity the logical primacy of molecular approaches is injustified Knowledge of the alphabet grammar syntax and the availability of a dictionary are necessary for the understanding of literature but they are not sufficient They simply
9. are not literature The uniformity of the rules leads to a great diversity in the results of their application Reducing the diversity of the outcomes of the application of the rules to the uniformity of the rules themselves is simply dull Music is not just the notes literature is not just the words and organisms are not just their molecules even if music is made of notes literature of words and organisms of molecules Life is not only chemistry Otherwise biology would make no sense and chemistry would be enough to understand life stupidity again 10 Modern Taxonomy Adam s godly task is not accomplished yet and we have to carry it out with all the modern tools that technology makes available We have many new species to find and this will happen by exploring the world where we did not look enough mainly the oceans We have to study diversity in all its facets from phenotypes to genotypes ecological niches life cycles populations communities So to know for every species all the things that our curiosity urges us to know Maybe it is not possible to have these tasks accomplished by a single person the study of diversity is multidisciplinary and some work will be carried out by morphologists some by molecular biologists some by ecologists They will work together to gain as much knowledge as possible about the diversity of life Then we will have to understand how these species assemble with each other and make communities and ecosys
10. cal diversity but especially in the marine realm our knowledge of habitats is still in its infancy and even an agreed upon way of naming marine habitats is wanting this leading to unfocused conservation policies 22 The only way to preserve nature is to release it from our pressure This can be achieved by rationalising our use of its resources but our first concern should take into serious consideration to disobey go and multiply degrowth to a sustainable size of our populations is our only hope We will go back to Eden when we will learn to regulate our pressure so to live in harmony with the rest of nature The state of biological diversity is the first and most important indication of the state of nature this is recognized by both the Rio Convention about Biological Diversity and the Bible When the multiple facets of our culture from science to religion converge in showing a way to save our species Diversity 2010 2 124 we should be able to transform information into knowledge and use knowledge to obtain wisdom The demise of taxonomy in the Era of Biodiversity is surely not a product of wisdom 13 The Faults of Taxonomists Traditional taxonomists succumbed to other members of the scientific community in the competition for the use of the resources dedicated to the exploration of biological diversity often not being even aware of their existence This happened because they did not understand the issue of the evaluation of sci
11. diversity Action must be rapid because man induced degradation of nature is rapid 3 Our Well Being and the Well Being of the Rest of Nature If we consider man instead of Nature and we look at the way we started to cure our health problems it is evident that we tried to find remedies even before we knew how our body is made and how it functions We tried herbs and rituals magic words and magic potions we were concerned about bleeding and how to stop it even before knowing that blood circulates in our body And nobody dreamt saying do nothing until we know everything about how we are made and how we function We performed medicine long before knowing that we were made of cells In parallel though we continued and still continue to study our body and perfected our practices according to the new knowledge as soon as it became available We are still exploring our body and probably we will never know everything about ourselves The invention of remedies and the exploration of our body proceeded in parallel The results are rather good in terms of improved care of our well being and this way of tackling the problem of the health of our body is probably the best one also to approach the problem of the health of the rest of nature Diversity 2010 2 117 Our ignorance about Nature is still enormous but this is just what science is all about its aim is to reduce ignorance 5 One and a half hundred years ago Darwin published The Origin of Sp
12. e to the zero IF of monographic work diversity had to be informatized Of course just as with the molecular approach this is the rigth thing to do it would be extremely stupid not to use the opportunities offered by information technology Lots of the money dedicated to the exploration of biodiversity thus were dedicated to the informatization of biodiversity information Huge projects were launched the Global Biodiversity Information Facility the European Network of Biodiversity Information Lifewatch the Census of Marine Life the European Register of Marine Species Diversitas the Tree of Life the list might go on so to fill one page 8 Almost every name means millions of either euros or dollars The logic behind all these projects is that information is there and it has to be made available A very useful deed indeed but what about knowledge We know the names of two million species and the estimate is that they are ten to fifteen millions So it is right to have the information about the two millions we know already but we should dedicate some more resources to the rest of the unknown portion of diversity the majority of it Paradoxically however after the share dedicated to molecular approaches and to information and technology enterprises very few resources remained to go in the field collect organisms bring them to labs and study their phenotypes to describe new species produce revisions and compile monographs Only very l
13. ecies and since then our way of seeing the world changed radically The basic principles governing life have been cleared even though many mysteries remain the main one is the process that led non living matter to become alive The discovery of DNA induced scientists to presume that as phrased by the editor in chief of Nature 6 Life is chemistry Of course chemistry is not what biology is all about but Maddox s permanence at the head of the most influential scientific journal for 22 years paved the way to the triumph of biochemistry and then of molecular biology Once known the secret of DNA we presumed to have revealed all mysteries of life Genome exploration became the Holy Grail of biological knowledge most efforts in the life sciences were focused on this aspect and on related ones 4 The Decline of Taxonomy in the Era of Biodiversity The stupidity of the title refers to the dismissal of taxonomy when this science was so obviously vital for the targets of the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity Nobody expected that ALL efforts had to be dedicated to the fulfilment of our divine mission but it still seems unbelievable that the mission could have been so neglected in spite of the Rio Convention that opened the era of biodiversity Of course it was and still is extremely important to explore the intricacies of molecular biology but putting all eggs in one basket is proverbially unwise Why thus against all odds traditional
14. ediction is being made since centuries from Malthus to Marx but evidently we care only about the predictions we like and disregard those that we do not like Diversity 2010 2 123 Stupidity takes its toll again since we based and still base our society on the paradigm of continuous i e infinite economic growth a rather infantile expectation that is impacting much on the biological diversity of the planet 12 Back to the Bible At the beginning of our evolution our ancestors did not have to work to get what they needed in a way the biblical story of the Garden of Eden depicts our initial condition of hunters and gatherers John Paul II once wrote that for him a rather authoritative interpreter of the Bible the forbidden fruit represents a limit to the use of the Garden of Eden We went over that limit and were expelled from the Garden condemned to work to get what we need To work to get own food is agriculture the expulsion from the Garden of Eden depicts the passage from hunting and gathering to agriculture Agriculture was developed when we had overexploited natural resources and we had to increase artificially the yield of nature but to enhance production we further destroyed diversity 9 This happened because we obejed another divine command go and multiply The fitness of an individual is measured by the size of its progeny by the efficiency in perpetuating its genotype in future generations so the tendency to multiply is
15. entific production and did not press to consider also the Citation Half Life in ranking scientists performances enforcing proper evaluation of revisionary and monographic work Taxonomists did not apply much for funds but were eager to contribute almost for free to rich projects that exploited their knowledge in molecular and information and technology based enterprises No research institution would hire scientists that do not bring research money and that work for free to the projects of other scientists Taxonomists did not elbow to enter high level advisory boards and did not raise their voice when the policy of biodiversity research was built with the advice of physicists geochemists molecular biologists agronomists modeling ecologists engineers economists but not with theirs Traditional and molecular taxonomists with very few exceptions worked in separation from each other weakening a potentially strong alliance The study of biodiversity cannot proceed further without the contribution of integrative taxonomy and these obstacles will have to be removed 23 Taxonomists must stop working for free denouncing in the meantime the faults of current scientific policies and proposing wiser ways to use the resources dedicated to implement biodiversity research Acknowledgements Research funded by INTERREG II Italy Albania by the E U Integrated Project SESAME the Ministero dell Ambiente e della Tutela del Territorio e del Mare Italy
16. he partnership for enhancing expertise in taxonomy Trends Ecol Evol 2001 16 266 Boero F Lots of biodiversity research services but for whom MarBEF Newsletter 2005 2 27 Boero F Recent innovations in marine biology Mar Ecol 2009 30 1 12 Bouillon J Gravili C Pag s F Gili J M Boero F An introduction to hydrozoa M m Mus Nat Hist Nat 2006 194 1 598 Paps J Baguna J Riutort M Bilaterian phylogeny a broad sampling of 13 nuclear genes provides a new Lophotorcozoa phylogeny and suppots a paraphyletic basal Acoelomorpha Mol Biol Evol 2009 26 2397 2406 Kristiansen K A Cilieborg M Drabkova L Jorgensen T Petersen G Seberg O DNA taxonomy the riddle of Oxychloe Juncaceae Syst Bot 2005 30 284 289 West Eberhard M J Toward a modern revival of Darwin s theory of evolutionary novelty Philos Sci 2008 75 899 908 Blaxter M L The promise of a DNA taxonomy Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2004 359 669 679 Ebach M C Holdredge C DNA barcoding is no substitute for taxonomy Nature 2005 434 697 Will K W Mishler B D Wheeler Q D The perils of DNA barcoding and the need for integrative taxonomy Syst Biol 2005 54 844 851 Gehring W J Ikeo K Pax 6 mastering eye morphogenesis and eye evolution Trends Genet 1999 15 371 377 Schmich J Kraus Y De Vito D Graziussi D Boero F Piraino S Induction of reverse development in
17. imited portions of biodiversity continue to be explored in a strategic way like that of the Antarctic or of the deep sea for reasons linked to commercial or political treaties and for the power of some scientific lobbies 8 Decision Makers and Wrong Decisions Decision makers following the directives of the Rio Convention decided to dedicate enormous resources to the study of biological diversity but taxonomists received a ridiculous share of them The lion s share went to molecular and computational scientists who pretended to have the solution to the problem of biodiversity exploration They do have some solution but theirs are not the solutions The approach must be multidisciplinary and must include traditional taxonomy In a Catch 22 situation however since traditional taxonomists are almost extinct due to their low IF there are not enough of them in powerful advisory committees to foster a policy to enhance taxonomy After decades of wrong decisions furthermore decision makers must defend own behaviour and are reluctant to admit their mistakes with the exception of NSF So the story continues Now the magic solution is the barcoding of life 14 Every species is identified by a genetic fingerprint the barcode and then one has just to read the barcode in each sample and the list of species comes out at the press of a button Very nice indeed But how to decide that that barcode identifies that species Specimens Diversity 2010
18. ing and circuitous lines of affinity Hence for instance there should be just one right phylogeny of the metazoa but every approach gives a different one the last one being the definitive one until a new one is elaborated by using another tool The last one by the time of the writing of this article is by Paps et al 11 who lamented however that these phylogenetic studies tend to increase the number of analysed genes rather than the number of considered species Furthermore before putting a living being in a grinder one has to guess what it is by inspecting a phenotype and give it a name Molecular taxonomists however know phenotypes in a rather primordial way So we might end up having very precise sequences deposited in international data bases that are referred to nominal species that might have been identified in an incorrect way and sometimes even the sequences are incorrect 12 The knowledge behind the provided information might be rather poor Molecular taxonomy is an essential aspect of taxonomy but it does not solve all problems We need to know both phenotypes and genotypes The so called central dogma of biology postulating a one way flow of information from genotype to phenotype suggested a logical primacy in investigating genotypes but epigenetics is showing that the so called dogma is not a universal law 13 In the USA the country that started these trends some illuminated scientists convinced the National Scie
19. ion was focused on their molecules A new question was what portions of the molecular information were to compare The list comprises enzymes histones aminoacids whole genotypes by DNA hybridization sequenced portions of RNA and of DNA either nuclear or mithocondrial or ribosomal In the beginning it seemed that the molecular approach would have solved the problem of recognizing biodiversity in an unequivocal way As suggested by the editor in chief of Nature chemistry was the solution Influential publishers thus launched journals dedicated to molecular taxonomy and systematics with hints to phylogeny These journals issued by industrial publishers received their Impact Factor very rapidly and real taxonomists had to be molecular Counting the hair in the back of beetles became a dull activity cool taxonomy being involved in counting stripes in electrophoretic probes or triplets of C A G T in sequencing experiments Machines extract information that can be read only by other machines scientists have just to grind the organisms and put them in their machines following complex protocols and then with complex algorithms computers build phylogenetic trees The problem however was not miraculously solved It happened that machines gave different answers about the same question according to the molecules that were being studied As Darwin elegantly argued all living and extinct beings are united into one grand system by complex radiat
20. m and landscape diversity Species diversity however does have a pivotal role in the study and perception of biodiversity The key question that triggered concern about biodiversity was How many species are there on our planet As shown by the animal paintings witnessing the first traces of human culture this question was probably our very first curiosity eliciting the rise of science It is suggestive that in the Bible Genesis 1 18 God gives just one job to Adam 1 to name animals Now Jehovah God was forming from the ground every wild beast of the field and every flying creature of the heavens and he began bringing them to the man to see what he would call each one Diversity 2010 2 116 and whatever the man would call it each living soul that was its name To name something means to acquire knowledge about it hence the Bible tells that God wants us to be knowledgeable The Bible after asking us to make the inventory of biodiversity by giving names to species even hints at the law of priority the foundation of taxonomic nomenclature whatever the man would call it each living soul that was its name The discipline aimed at naming species i e taxonomy is the only science that obeys the wills of the Creator as Darwin 2 used to call the hypothethical entity that created the universe the study of biological diversity thus is a mission from God 2 Species Diversity and Conservation The estimated number of living species
21. nce Foundation that the dismissal of traditional taxonomy had been a stupid move stupidity again The country was almost deprived of taxonomists the few remaining ones being old and confined to Museums and young graduate students were not willing to pursue a career in a suicidal discipline To revive taxonomy NSF launched the Partnership for Enhancing Expertise in Taxonomy The need of such initiative was due to the undeniable fact that traditional taxonomists had disappeared from the USA scientific community and that molecular taxonomy was not enough 7 The rest of the world is behind the USA of about 10 to 20 years so the process of taxonomy dismissal is still on course in many countries that unfortunately are not learning from the mistakes of the USA and are destroying their expertise in taxonomy to follow a false modernity that is only linked to the power of Diversity 2010 2 120 some scientific lobby The disgraces of taxonomy however are not limited to the abuse of the Impact Factor in ranking disciplines and scientists There is much more 7 Services to Taxonomy Information Is Not Knowledge With the advent of Information Technology and after the Rio Convention it became obvious that all the things we know about the millions of species we have described so far must be ordered in some way so to make them easily accessible to the scientific community In the past this was done through monographs but this became unfashionable du
22. or by the same sequences PAX genes that strongly suggest monophyly 17 This unity in diversity might lead to the conclusion that basic functions can be studied in model organisms and that the results are then applicable to the rest of nature We do not need to check if all organisms are coded by DNA the organization of living matter is based on a single type of information and this is a biological law At a certain level of complexity however things become more intricate and the uniformity of nature is not so universal anymore The unity at the base of the organization of living matter is counterbalanced by a great diversity at the species level not all species are the same It is a universal law of nature for instance that multicellular animals are born grow reproduce and then die due to ageing if not killed by starvation predators or pathogens Some hydrozoans however can reach the adult medusa stage spawn and then instead of dying de differentiate their adult cells and re differentiate them in the cells of the larval polyp and these will re assemble a polyp colony performing ontogeny reversal 18 The universal law of ageing is not valid for some metazoan species whose study might yield some more hints about why and how animals become old or why and how their cells can change their fate An exceptional organism found by chance during the exploration of biodiversity can lead to the understanding of the rules that it can break
23. ot damage the scientific community in terms of information availability Novel sciences like biochemistry and molecular biology did not have such services and so they became the main customers of ISI which however was presumed to cover all sciences in an equal way The situation is not strange at all in terms of commercial policies ISI is not a charity and it had to take care of own business However the way of ranking journals with the original sin of the omission of taxonomic ones for the internal purposes of ISI went over its original scope and became in use by the scientific community to rank the performances of scientists 9 ISI however elaborated also other indexes besides the Impact Factor The Cited Half Life CHL for instance tells for how long the average article of a journal continues to be cited It is not surprising that most of the journals with high IF do have low CHL and vice versa The law of priority prevents any paper containing the description of a species from being forgotten its CHL is infinite Infinite for ISI is gt 10 years The scientists that started to use the ISI standards to evaluate scientific performances disregarded the CHL and used only the IF Strange enough their tribunes had high IF and low CHL so they enhanced what was favourable to them disregarding other indexes Taxonomists remained silent while this game started being played They did not even know what ISI repertoires were since these con
24. tained a negligible part of the information they needed so why care about them The basic science of diversity traditional taxonomy however started to be evaluated like all other sciences according to the performances of its practitioners in terms of IF And their IF was usually and still is very low Publishing monographs furthermore leads to zero IF since books are not covered in these evaluations A 600 page monograph like the one produced by Bouillon et al 10 for instance has no value in terms of Impact Factor since the Memoirs of the National Museum of Natural History of Paris are not covered by the Web of Science And all citations to it that appear in non ISI journals do not count Hence when scientific careers became boosted by researchers IF traditional taxonomy resulted in a scientific suicide This led to its rapid disappearance from Universities and the discipline became confined to Museums The exclusion from the capacity building system of science Universities however was fatal for the discipline that however became revived by molecular taxonomy 6 The Grinding Frenzy and the PEET Taxonomy in fact regained some IF respectability when it turned molecular Instead of inspecting phenotypes it became popular to investigate diversity at a molecular level after all phenotypes are Diversity 2010 2 119 specified by genotypes So organisms started to be ground their bodies were not looked at much and attent
25. tems function how they form ecological landscapes how they react to our impact how we can use them in a sustainable way how can we preserve them All this knowledge will have to be translated into bits of information that will have to be made available by information technology platforms All these disciplines must collaborate to acquire a single vision of the grand picture of life By now they are competing for resources and we must shift from a competition scenario to a cooperation scenario since the winning approaches have no logical supremacy over the neglected ones 11 Predictive Science For some scientists science is to be predictive and the general public expect it to be so Scientists extract information from the world elaborate it and tell what will happen performing predictions that will help society in planning the best practices for our well being This idyllic view of the world is hampered by the inherent unpredictability of non linear systems 20 Some predictions are very easily made however but we do not want to know about them Since our planet is finite for instance it is easy to predict that nothing can grow to the infinite infinite growth in a finite system is simply impossible but economists expect continuous i e infinite growth without considering that our growth occurs at the expenses degrowth of the rest of diversity It is very easy to predict that this will lead to collapse of ecological systems This pr
26. two marine hydrozoans Int Journ Dev Biol 2007 51 45 56 West Eberhard M J Developmental Plasticity and Evolution Oxford University Press New York NY USA 2003 Boero F Bonsdorff E A conceptual framework for marine biodiversity and ecosystem functioning Mar Ecol 2007 28 134 145 Naylor R L Burke M Aquaculture and ocean resources raising tigers of the sea Annu Rev Environ Resour 2005 30 185 218 Fraschetti S Terlizzi A Boero F How many habitats are there on Earth and where J Exp Mar Biol Ecol 2008 366 109 115 Diversity 2010 2 126 23 Boero F State of knowledge of marine and coastal biodiversity in the Mediterranean Sea Project for the Preparation of a Strategic Action Plan for the conservation of biological diversity in the Mediterranean region Sap BIO United Nations Environmental Programme Regional Activity Centre for Specially Protected Areas Tunis Tunisia 2003 2010 by the author licensee Molecular Diversity Preservation International Basel Switzerland This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license http creativecommons org licenses by 3 0
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