The taxonomic impediment: a shortage of taxonomists, not the lack of technical approaches

Abstract

For almost 30 years, there have been active discussions about the taxonomic impediment and the challenge this represents to address the current human-induced biodiversity crisis. From the start (Systematics Agenda 2000, 1994), the term ‘taxonomic impediment’ has been ambiguous, designating both the insufficiency and inadequacy of the resources put to the service of taxonomy (the taxonomic impediment sensu stricto) and its main consequence, the wide discrepancy between the reality of specific biodiversity and our knowledge of it (the taxonomic gap; Dubois, 2010; Raposo et al., 2020). The total number of species on our planet is unknown, and its various estimates (using different methods) are widely divergent, but consensus exists that we are far from having inventoried half, and most likely one-tenth, of the species still present on earth today (González-Oreja, 2008).

Meanwhile, the biodiversity crisis has developed, so that it is now doubtless that a large part of these species will become extinct in the current and coming decades due to anthropogenic actions. This should put taxonomic urgency (Wheeler et al., 2004; Dubois, 2010) at the top of the priority list for biological sciences in our ‘century of extinctions’ (Dubois, 2003). It is clear that, despite its efforts, conservation biology will not significantly reduce the rate of extinction, even for vertebrates on which most attention is concentrated (Hoffmann et al., 2010). The main duty of scientists regarding this situation should be to reduce, as much as possible, the taxonomic gap and to store specimens and tissues that will testify to the vanishing biodiversity of our planet. Once safely stored, research on this material will be possible, even if the species have fallen to extinction in the interim.