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... It's a bit intimidating to follow Dr.[David] Ehrenfeld's talk -- not only in the sense of the powerful way he projects some of the doom for society and the planet, if we don't get our act together; but if Rutgers serves as a model system for anything, also predicts the doom of the Provost's office. I hope that's not generally applied.

I was charged by the conveners of this symposium to extol not only the capabilities and the reach of science, for its applications to biodiversity and biodiversity conservation, but also to look at its limitations and pitfalls. And where, in Dr. Ehrenfeld's talk, I find the segué is his emphasis on systematics and taxonomy and the importance of those roles, and the disturbing fact that so much of that resource -- so much of that brain power, so much of that kind of activity -- has been winnowed away to a very serious extent.

So if there's any theme for this talk, it may be simply an appeal, an explanation, a rationale for why we need more systematists. And I recognize, in this sense, that I'm also perhaps preaching to many of the converted here, and also the cognoscenti. But it's a healthy exercise for us to remind ourselves, given the challenges that were just outlined.

But before I do that, in the spirit of emphasizing the fact that misused science -- what would happen if you had a good taxonomist around, for instance -- those scenarios, and how they relate to decisions and actions and projects. Allow me to indulge for a moment in my favorite bad example. During World War II, a rather superficial observation that there were plenty of bats in caves in southwestern U.S. gave birth to Project X-ray. In this project, small incendiary bombs were strapped to thousands of bats; and the bats were dropped from planes, with the intention of inducing them to alight in the rafters of armament plants and factories of the enemy and light fires all around. Unfortunately, the bats chosen for Project X-ray, the freetailed bats -- Tadarida braziliensis. -- were a taxon referable to the family Molossidae, a group noted for its muscle and skeletal anatomy that allowed for a depth maneuvering on terrestrial surfaces and alighting on the ground, as well as for a capacity to fly great distances.

And some of these bats -- here are pictures of Tadarida braziliensis -- some of these bats managed to fly, indeed, unpredictably great distances, to an inhabited town in Texas, where they came to roost on a fuel tank -- necessitating prompt evacuation of the human occupants of the town. A couple of other fully-armed bats managed to escape their handlers and set fires that consumed most of a military airbase near Carlsbad, New Mexico. These accidents may have dampened the Army's spirit in the project, and so, accordingly, the project was promptly turned over to the Navy. Mysteriously enough, Project X-ray was abandoned in October of 1944, after a cost of $2 million and the sacrifice of thousands of bats.

Now, I share this story not only because I think it's rather entertaining, in a repugnant and incredible sort of way. It does help float the simple platitude that bad taxonomy can kill -- or, rather, bad taxonomy can even kill what we don't intend to kill, or even kill the agents intended for destruction, in the process. Now, I don't mean to argue that any good, any matter of good taxonomy, could have justified or saved Project X-ray, but a little understanding about the taxonomy of bats, their diversity, their habits, may have succeeded in derailing this ill-begotten enterprise.

Of course, bad taxonomy can kill even if it's meant to save, as Robert May -- someone who was mentioned earlier -- pointed out in this Nature article. In this case, a conservation plan to save the tuatara lizard on New Zealand was unintentionally destructive, or deleterious, because of misinformation about the distinctive nature of different populations of tuataras in areas under threat.

So one may logically ask: How much of what we view as well-intentioned conservation action is actually derived from bad taxonomy, bad biology, or bad science, or no science at all? Even if the misuse may not be as blatant as the case of Project X-ray.

Turning the question round in a more positive fashion: Where and how does good taxonomy, good biology and good science make a difference to conserving biodiversity? To make this connection is rather challenging. The connection is not always clear to scientists, or those who are desperately crying out for scientific information. And part of the problem arises from the names we apply to the basic mission, the basic exercise, that takes on the title of my talk -- that is, "Mapping the Ebb and Flow of Life."

So a positive step then has to deal with the conundrum arising from the common uses of two words. And although you might be critical of my obsession with nomenclature, I think the nomenclature itself, and its connotations, is often deleterious to the notions of what the science is, and what it really brings to our understanding of the natural world.

The terms "taxonomy" and "systematics" are the ones I'm speaking of. They've been used variously and interchangeably. In my own experience, the word "taxonomy" is a practice akin to cataloguing or naming things. The word "systematics," on the other hand, often means the same thing as taxonomy, or hardly means anything at all. Just check any dictionary to find that out.

I've suggested definitions, with some minor retooling, that reflect some of the thoughts of the great evolutionary biologist, George Gaylord Simpson. Systematics is the science that deals with the organization, history, and evolution of life. It ultimately asks: How did life forms originate, how did they diversify, and how are they distributed in both space and time? Taxonomy is the practice of describing and naming life forms and arranging them in classifications that reflect patterns of relationships. It provides the language of systematics. It is part of systematics, not the whole of systematics. Taxonomy may thus be regarded as an operational core of systematics. Organisms are named, described, and their representative specimens catalogued, so that a databank of information is assembled. These taxonomic efforts, however, require a motive, and the motive is provided by systematics.

Now, despite the great winnowing away of systematists that has been mentioned, it's ironic, it's ironic, that in the last two decades systematic biology has experienced a revolution. It's safe to claim that systematics today represents one of the most theoretically sophisticated and intellectually vibrant of the fields of biology. New methods help us draw a map of life -- usually in the form of a branching tree, or a phylogeny, or a hierarchy. And this exercise in mapping has become much more rigorous, to the point that the methods have brought together different areas -- a whole spectrum of biology. Not only the traditional areas of morphology, but also molecular biology, and systematics encompasses a great variety of impressive evidence: development, physiology, behavior and genetic change.

As for the relevance of systematics in the agenda for the future of the planet, never has the message been so clear. There are 1.4 million described species in our biological classifications, but this hardly qualifies as an exhaustive encyclopedia. An educated guess, or many educated guesses concerning this actual number of species out there range between 10 and 30 million species. And it may seem very odd, as you well know, that modern biology remains so ignorant. Yet, as Quentin Wheeler shows here, the world is a different bioscape when viewed in terms of species diversity. Ten to 30 million more species primarily mean 10 to 30 million more aquatic plants, and animals, and roundworms, and beetles, and various and sundry microorganisms -- valiantly studied, as emphasized, by a comparatively thin rank of biologists.

Much more disturbing is another statistic -- one familiar to this audience and thematic to this symposium. Human activity may promote the extinction of nearly one-third to one-fourth of the world's species within 50 years. This is a very large number -- namely, one-fourth of 10 to 30 million species. The biological world is truly evaporating before we get a chance to effectively know it.

Now, if things were ideal, a map of life, a tree that relates all the lineages of life in ordered patterns -- that indicates evolutionary relationship -- this is the framework for understanding this planet's extraordinary biota. It would be unthinkable, for instance, to contemplate the science of chemistry without a table of the elements. Likewise, a map of life's diversity is our table of the elements. And given our ignorance of the biota, we can hardly claim that our table of elements draws on a comprehensive set of data.

Yet, the truths that scientists may hold self-evident are sometimes esoteric and unsatisfying to a broader audience. We're concerned here with the rapid devastation of the planet's ecosystems. It is clear that the urgency of this problem cannot simply be addressed with a monolithic mission to name and catalogue all the planet's species. It is estimated that species are going -- as we heard in a variety of talks yesterday -- are going extinct at rates of 100, 1,000, or 10,000 times the background rate of extinction. Indexing this figure against millions of species that exist yields rather harrowing figures for the extinction rate. Is one species going extinct at the rate of one per week, per day, per hour, per minute? We cannot even hope, even with the best of resources and an army of systematists of Napoleonic proportions, to make a full accounting of this eroding biodiversity. So how can systematics be efficiently and urgently applied to mitigating the biodiversity crisis?

The response to that question is frankly drawn from the thoughts and actions of many of my colleagues here at the Museum, and many systematists in the world community. First, and the main point: Systematics should inform the triage necessary to recognize priorities in conservation. Norman Platnick, a curator at the Museum, and a world expert on spiders, has offered an example of three areas with significantly different levels of species diversity. Suppose various factors only allowed us to preserve two of those areas. Should we automatically pick the richest two -- in this case, A and B? On the other hand, we find that C has a very different biota, sharing much less in common with A and B. Indeed, given the figures here, preserving the least diverse communities might save 6,900 species, rather than the 5,000 from the two most diverse areas.

Now, this is a very simple and hypothetical example, but it shows some of the basic premises for the information that systematics can bring to decisions on all scales about conservation. Systematics can help in establishing conservation priorities by identifying unique species that are confined to distinctly bounded and threatened regions. Habitats that abound in these kinds of unique combinations of organisms -- these unique species -- are called "areas of endemism." And the recognition and study of endemic species and areas of endemism provide a bridge between systematics and conservation plans of action. As we learned yesterday, in Dr. [Stuart] Pimm's powerful plenary lecture, endemic species are particularly vulnerable to extinction, so they're at the core of the issues that concern biodiversity conservation.

For example, consider Platnick's work on spiders and world spider systematics. Spiders are a major land predator of insects, including many actual and potential insect pests. And new spider species are practically a matter of daily discovery. Surprisingly, this vital component of terrestrial ecosystems does not fit the common model of global biodiversity -- the model that the tropics are the great sinks of biodiversity. Rather, in southern South America, diversity of spider species seems much greater than even in the neotropics. It is thus alarming that the very limited endemic forested regions representing important spider habitats in this part of South America are being destroyed at a much greater proportional rate than the Amazon basin. The information that these endemic spider species provide, in terms of index species for endemic habitats, should be vital and relevant to conservation plans aimed at salvaging the mosaic of very fragile habitats in that very beautiful part of the world, the southern segment of South America.

Another dimension of systematic information that bears on conservation decisions concerns knowledge of the pattern of relationships -- the basic essence of systematics -- or the knowledge of phylogenies of the species in question. For instance, Melanie Stiassny -- her work here at the American Museum concerns fishes and endangered freshwater habitats in Africa and other continents -- and Melanie spoke yesterday about the variety of problems related to her research.

Heterochromisis a cyclid found in the central part of Africa, in a very limited backwater habitat in the central basin of the Zaire River. This fact alone argues for a high priority in preservation of the fish in the habitat. But Heterochromis has another important quality that notches up its priority ranking. On this very sketchy diagrammatic tree, Heterochromis is taxon B -- a branch sticking way out there out of the base of that tree. It is a branch, it represents a branch -- a part of the great history of cyclids that occurred before the great radiations of cyclid species in Africa and Madagascar that are represented by groups C and D in the corner of that tree.

So what does this mean? Well, there's some high weight attached to the fact that so much of that history is part of Heterochromis. And one can, as people have proposed, develop a number of formulas to signify that, including May in some of his work. You can take the total number of species and divide it by the number of nodes they represent and come up with a ratio that shows that Heterochromis' recovery of historical information is quite high. Thus, the loss of Heterochromis multidens is not simply the loss of yet another cyclid species, although they're all important. The scientific weight of such early branching lineages is evident.

But what are the practical benefits of such information? And that's an issue that we confront all the time in the conservation arena. Well, for one thing, such early reference lineages may be critical to anchoring patterns of character change, evolutionary change and diversity of a particular anatomical feature or a particular behavior -- or a particular chemical or a gene. The character that appears early in the history of the group will likely provide the blueprint for various expressions of that character. This has a clear application in the exploration of related species -- for instance, for the presence of chemical products that may have health or pharmaceutical applications. Or in reconstructing the evolution of agents in the search of the cure of disease, as in the case of phylogenies for the HIV virus and other pathogenic taxa.

At any rate, we can at least predict that the loss of these early branching taxa comes with an extraordinary loss in the information important to biology, ecosystem services and potential benefits of human health and welfare.

The cyclid example, and many others, concern a particular group and its taxa distributed over a broad geographic area, but such analysis of endemism and phylogenetic information can be carried out for a rich array of different taxa over many geographic scales. Studies can refer to particular regions, even different microhabitats for different species -- vertebrates, insects, plants. Of course, this does not preclude the application of any number of factors in making conservation decisions -- for example, the degree of the threat to the habitat and the feasibility about carrying on a plan for protection or controlled use.

The point here is that the information contributed by systematics is both relevant and beneficial in these conservation decisions. Moreover, observations by systematists about biogeography and distribution have led to generalizations that are very important in designing the habitats, refuges, for species preservation.

The map of life can be fashioned along two axes -- one for habitats and place, locations, and the other for taxa themselves and their cumulative histories. The interplay of these two axes is profoundly at the core of systematic research, and directly related to the work to inform conservation efforts. If we had enough time, think of what a relatively stabilized biota would offer in terms of its magnificent architecture fashioned along these axes.

As it is, we are confronted with a rearguard action, where science and conservation must dovetail and focus with great urgency. This has to happen if humans, during the next century, are going to have any sense of the awesome scope of nature, and the beauty and the knowledge it offers, and any sense of an existence that is served by a less degraded state of the planet.

I fear this is not a very analytical coda, but I must confess my own role in promoting this Museum's initiatives linking systematics to biodiversity conservation was not inspired by powerful new analysis, tests, new data or discovery. I remember the event that got me going on this track. It was the shock of learning from a number of young candidates for systematic biology positions here that they had witnessed the demise and/or destruction of their study sites and/or populations of species during the course of their thesis research. The statistics on disappearing species and habitats offered here, and in many other symposia, have an emotional resonance that defies descriptions.

I've reviewed in this talk just a few areas where science can inform the stewardship of nature. If these connections are viewed by some as too wimpy, or too late, to confront with the biodiversity crisis, so be it. Nevertheless, and at least, systematics and other biological sciences provides a sobering record, currently dominated more by the ebb than the flow of life, that cannot be ignored.

Thank you very much.

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