The world needs a comprehensive inventory of all living things, comparable to the astronomers' catalogue of the stars, British scientists say.
Without one, the fight to save increasingly threatened wildlife will be handicapped, Lord May of Oxford, president of Britain's Royal Society, and Professor John Lawton, chief executive of the British
Natural Environment Research Council, said.
One of the problems is that taxonomy, the science of naming and classifying living things, has come to seem old-fashioned and little effort and too few resources are going into it.
"We have the human genome and we have space exploration, but we still don't have a half-decent list of all the organisms on the planet, " Professor Lawton said.
"It would possibly take a decade and a very concentrated research effort, but it's potentially do-able. We still haven't the faintest idea, for example, which is the most species-rich group ... Some people think it's insects, but it might be nematode worms."
Far too little was known about smaller creatures such as micro-organisms, the scientists said.
"A lot of money is spent on research into mammals and birds, but we need to know what is most important for the continuance of the ecosystem on which we depend," Lord May said.
- INDEPENDENT
Further reading
nzherald.co.nz/environment
