A. Concerned citizens and scientists have begun to take
action. A wide range of solutions is being proposed to stop the destruction of
biodiversity at the regional as well as the global level. Since 1985,the effort
has become more precisely charted, economically efficient, and politically
sensitive. B. The new biodiversity studies will lead logically
to an electronic encyclopedia of life designed to organize and make immediately
available everything known about each of the millions of species. The
industrialized countries will lead for a time. However, the bulk of the work
must eventually be done in the developing countries. The latter contains most of
the world species, and they are destined to benefit soonest from the research.
The technology needed is relatively inexpensive, and its transfer can be
accomplished quickly. The discoveries generated can be applied directly to meet
the concerns of greatest importance to the geographic region in which the
research is conducted, being equally relevant to agriculture, medicine, and
economic growth. C. In the midst of this richness of life forms,
however, the rate of species extinction is rising, chiefly through habitat
destruction. Most serious of all is the conversion of tropical rainforests,
where most species of animals and plants live. The rate has been estimated, by
two independent methods, to fall between 100 and 10, 000 times the pre-human
background rate, with 1, 000 times being the most widely accepted figure. The
price ultimately to be paid for this cataclysm is beyond measure in foregone
scientific knowledge; new pharmaceutical and other products; ecosystems services
such as water purification and soil renewal; and, not least, aesthetic and
spiritual benefits. D. Since the current hierarchical,
binomial classification was introduced by Carolus Linnaeus 250 years ago, 10
percent, at a guess, of the species of organisms have been described. It is
believed that most and perhaps nearly all of the remaining 90 percent can be
discovered, diagnosed, and named in as little as about 25 years. That potential
is the result of two developments needed to accelerate biodiversity
studies. E. The increasing attention given to the biodiversity
crisis highlights the inadequacy of biodiversity research itself. Earth remains
in this respect a relatively unexplored planet. The total number of described
and formally named species of organisms has grown, but not by much, and today is
generally believed to lie somewhere between 1.5 million and 1.8 million The full
number, including species yet to be discovered, has been estimated in various
accounts that differ according to assumptions and methods from an improbably low
3.5 million to an improbably high 100 million. By far the greatest fraction of
the unknown species will be insects and microorganisms. F. The
past decade has witnessed the emergence of a much clearer picture of the
magnitude of the biodiversity problem. Put simply, the biosphere has proved to
be more diverse than was earlier supposed, especially in the case of small
microorganisms. An entire domain of life, the Archaea, has been distinguished
from the bacteria, and a huge, still mostly unknown and energetically
independent environment has been found to extend three kilometers or more below
the surface of Earth. G. The first is information technology, with which
high-resolution digitized images of specimens can now be obtained. Moreover,
type specimens, scattered in museums around the world can now be photographed
and made instantly available everywhere as "types" on the Internet. The second
revolution about to catapult biodiversity studies forward is genomics, which
will soon enable scientists to describe bacterial and Achaean species by partial
DNA sequences and to subsequently identify them by genetic barcoding.