Editorial: On the Future of Conservation Biology

Edward O. Wilson

Conservation Biology, Vol. 14, No. 1. (Feb., 2000), pp. 1-3.

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Editorial

On the Future of Conservation Biology

Conservation biology has been aptly described as a disci- are prime targets for the emerging field of general com-
pline with a deadline, but for those who work in this in- plexity theory. They have already been singled out as
tensive-care ward of ecology it is more precisely a never- paradigms of complex adaptive systems and are certain
ending avalanche of deadlines. The conservation biolo- to attract the attention not just of ecologists but also of
gist knows that each imperiled species is a masterpiece physicists, molecular biologists, and others who are run-
of evolution, potentially immortal except for rare chance ning short of virgin fields of inquiry.
or human choice, and its loss a disaster. You and I will Like the rest of science, community ecology advances
be entirely forgotten in a thousand years, but, live or die, by repeated cycles of reduction and synthesis, in which
the black-footed ferret, barndoor skate, Lefevre's riffle bottom-up analysis of the working parts explains the
shell, Florida torreya, and the thousands of other species complex whole and, in reciprocity, an evolving theory
now on the brink of extinction will not be forgotten, not of the complex whole guides further exploration of the
while there is a civilization. Our conservation successes, working parts. The relevance of this perpetual process
the only truly enduring part of us, will live in their sur- to conservation biology is as follows. The more or less
vival. independently evolved key working parts are the spe-
Conservation biologists are crisis managers who ply cies. In the future, solid advances in community ecology
the fill1 array of biological organization from gene to eco- will depend increasingly on a detailed knowledge of spe-
system. Their scientific work is both basic and practical. cies and their natural history, which feeds and drives
It is also one of the most eclectic of intellectual endeav- theory.
ors. Consider the following example from recent media It follows that community ecology and conservation
headlines: survival of the red-cockaded woodpecker, a biology are in desperate need of a renaissance of system-
bird (an American bird no less) turns upon our knowl- atics and natural history. By systematics I mean much
edge of its distribution and natural history, survival of more than just the phylogenetic analysis of already
the mature pine woodland in which it lives, the eco- known species. I'hylogenetic reconstruction, currently
nomic and political forces that erode its nest sites, the the dominating focus of systematics, obviously is worth
legislation that protects it, and, not least, the moral pre- doing, but more scientifically important and far more ur-
cepts that support the very idea of ecosystem and spe- gent for human welfare is the description and mapping
cies conservation. of the world biota. They are scientifically important be-
No real basis exists-as some writers have imagined- cause descriptive systematics is the foundation for com-
for conflict between ecosystem studies and single-spe- munity ecology. And they are urgent because the devel-
cies studies in conservation biology. Each is vital and opment of a mature, accessible knowledge of global
intellectually dependent upon the other. Within the biodiversity is necessary for conservation theory and
broader framework of ecosystem studies, community practice.
ecology in particular is about to emerge as one of the Few biologists other than systematists appreciate how
most significant intellectual frontiers of the twenty-first little is known of Earth's biodiversity. Estimates of the to-
century. Although it still has only a n~ouse'sshare of sci- tal number of species still vacillate wildly: 3,600,000 at
ence funding, it stands intellectually in the front rank the low end and 111,700,000 at the high end (Global
with astrophysics. genomics, and neuroscience. Com- Biodiz)ersity Assessment. 1995). The estimated number
munity ecologists face the daunting challenge of ex- of species described and given scientific names ranges
plaining how biotas are assembled and sustained. Most between 1.5 and 8 million. Here also the true number is
of their effort today is in description and analysis, with only a matter of speculation. Even figures for the rela-
closest attention paid to one species or to several spe- tively well-studiecl vertebrates are spongy. Estimates for
cies as modules. As time passes, more resources will be the extant fish species of the world, including both de-
put into the mathematical modeling and experimental scribed and ~~ndescribed, range from 15,000 to 40,000.
rnanip~~lation of entire assemblages, from the bottom That figure becomes a veritable black hole in the case of
up, species to communities. Biotas, like cells and brains, the bacteria and archaea, whose species could with

Consenration Biology. I'agrs 1-3

Volume 13, S o . 1 . Febru;iry 2000
equal ease number either in the thousands or in the tens sity Information Facility (GBIF), whose charge is to coor-
of millions. dinate and bring on-line all the rapidly accumulating
Natural history is still further behind. Even among the electronic databases for various groups of organisms.
named species-never mind those still undiscovered- The effort will be aided by the growth of regional institu-
only a minute fraction, less than 196, have been studied tions such as the East Asian Network for Taxonorny and
beyond the essentials of habitat preference and diagnos- Biodiversity Conservation, headquartered in Seoul, and
tic anatomy. In general, ecologists and conservation biol- the Biodiversity Foundation for Africa, based in Bula-
ogists appear not to fully appreciate how thin the ice is wayo.
on which they skate. By 2020 or earlier the combined methodology might
The full exploration of the living part of this planet work as follows. Imagine an arachnologist making a first
will be an adventure of megascience, summoning the study of the spider fauna of an isolated Ecuadorian rain
energy and imagination of our best minds. Its relevance forest. He (or she, recognizing with admiration the pow-
to human welfare was spelled out in the Convention on erful and growing influence of women scientists in this
Biological Diversity of the 1992 Earth Summit, and much discipline) sits in camp sorting newly collected speci-
of its methodology and possible organizational flow- mens with the aid of a portable, internally illuminated
chart by Systematics Agenda 2000. Funding is still lim- microscope. After quickly sorting the material to family
ited given the task at hand but is rising under the aus- or genus, he enters the electronic keys that list character
pices of organizations such as the Global Environmental states for, say, 20 characters and pulls out the most
Facility and special programs of the U.S. National Sci- probable names for each specimen in turn. Now the
ence Foundation. arachnologist consults monographs of the families or
If conservation biology is to mature into an effective genera available on the World Wide Web, studying the
science, pure systematics must be accompanied by a illustrations, pondering the distribution maps and natu-
massive growth of natural history. For each species, for ral history recorded to date. If monographs are not yet
the higher taxa to which it belongs, and for the popula- available, he calls up digitized photographs from the
tions it comprises, there is value in every scrap of infor- GBIF files of the most likely type specimens taken wher-
mation. Serendipity and pattern recognition are the fruit ever they are-London, Vienna, Sao Paulo, anywhere
of encyclopedic knowledge gathered for its own sake. photographic or electron micrographs have been made-
For example, all that can be learned about an endan- and compares them with the fresh specimens by pan-
gered conifer on New Caledonia, about the rest of the ning, rotating, magnifying, and pulling back again for
conifers of New Caledonia, and about every other mem- complete views. Does this specimen belong to a new
ber of the entire world conifer flora, deserves dedicated species? He records its existence (noting the exact loca-
pursuit. Periodic summaries of the information are right- tion from his global positioning system receiver), habi-
fully placed into Nature, Science, Proceedings of the Na- tat, web form, and other relevant information into the
tional Academy of Sciences, and other mainstream jour- GBIF, and he states where the voucher specimens will
nals. Just being there, they help recruit the media to the be placed-perhaps later to become type specimens. In-
good cause. For in order to care deeply about something formatics has thus allowed the type specimens of Ecua-
important it is first necessary to know about it. So let LIS dorian spiders in a sense to be repatriated to Ecuador,
resume old-fashioned expeditions at a quickened pace, and new data on its spider fauna to be made immedi-
solicit money for permanent field stations, and expand ately and globally available.
the support of young scientists-call them "naturalists" The arachnologist has accomplished in a few hours
with pride-who by inclination and the impress of early what previously consumed weeks or months of library
experience cornrnit themselves to deep knowledge of and museum research. He understands that biodiversity
particular groups of organisms. studies advance along two orthogonal axes. First are
Naturalists at heart, conservation biologists in ultimate monographs, which treat all of the species across their
purpose, they are in every sense of the word modern sci- entire ranges, and second are local biodiversity studies,
entists. Their purview comprises systematics, ecology, which describe in detail the species occurring in a single
and conservation biology, increasingly empowered by locality, habitat, or region. When expanded to include
methodology for the accun~ulationand analysis of elec- more and more groups, local biodiversity studies may
tronic databases. Their technology expands according to eventually cover all local plants, animals, and microorgan-
Moore's Law: a doubling of microchip capacity every 18 isms, creating an all-taxa biotic inventory (ATBI), a truly
months. In 1999 a new initiative, Species 2000, set out, solid base for community ecology in its full complexity.
at last, to catalog all named species of organisms and thus These crosscutting databases open new avenues of use-
provide an instantly accessible census of known global ful analysis for the conservation biologist. When informa-
biodiversity. In 1999 the Megascience Forum of the Or- tion on elevation, slope, vegetation cover, soil type, rain-
ganization for Economic Cooperation and Development fall, and other biotic and abiotic properties of the study
(OECD) authorized the creation of the Global Biodiver- site are digitized, overlaid with one another, and matched

Conservation Biology
Volume 14. No I , Fehruaq 2000
Wihn Editorial 3

with similar overlays from the surrounding region, the To build encyclopedic hypertexts of systematics and
range of new and rare species can be predicted. At least a natural history is simultaneously to promote ecotourism,
good guess can be made about where each in turn is most which the governments of many developing countries
likely to occur. To single-species searches and mapping now see as a principal source of foreign-exchange in-
can be added the already welldeveloped technique of come. In Costa Rica, for example, tourism with a strong
gap analysis, in which the overlays include cropland, hu- natural-history slant, yielding upwards of a billion dollars
man habitation, transportation routes, ground and runoff a year, has now passed banana and coffee production as
water reserves, and current reserves. With such informa- the chief source of external income.
tion available in easily accessible form, regional conserva- Systematics and natural history databases also are obvi-
tion becomes not only scientifically sound but a great deal ously necessary for bioprospecting, the search for new
easier to achieve in the political arena. pharmaceuticals, agricultural crops, fibers, and other
Systematics and natural history also form the requisite natural products that can be harvested from wild spe-
empirical base for population viability analyses (PVAs), cies. The same is true for genes to be used in interspe-
which are key instruments for predicting the future of cific transfers, one of the driving forces of the new and
species at risk and devising means for pulling them future giant industry of genetic engineering.
back to safety. Furthermore, PVAs will in time allow the When large arrays of species are studied for their in-
prognosis of exotic species most likely to become inva- trinsic interest, the result is a heuristic surge in basic and
sive, that is, destined to grow from harmless beachhead applied research in other domains of biology. New phe-
populations to levels that are economically and environ- nomena are discovered and research agendas suggested
mentally destructive. At the present time we notori- never dreamed of by those with the opposite research
ously lack the capacity to identify potential pests such strategy, which is to choose a problem within the ambit
as the zebra mussel, red imported fire ant, green crab, of existing knowledge and then to search for a species-
brown tree snake, and miconia before they are irrevers- any species-useful for its solution. Thus, conservation
ibly established. The general public will be unani- biologists of the coming century will, so long as they
mously on the side of conservationists in this effort. The draw strength from the groundwork of biodiversity ex-
zebra mussel alone, while exterminating native mussel ploration, serve science handsomely and lead humanity
populations, also shuts down electrical utilities by clog- toward one of its noblest goals.
ging water intake pipes. The resulting losses will accu-
mulate, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,
to 5 billion dollars by the year 2002. This example by it-
self should have enough weight on the balance sheet to Edward 0. Wilson
justify major financial support for ecology and conserva- Museum of Comparative Zoology, Haward University, Cambridge, MA
tion biology. 02138, I1.S.A.

Conservation Biology
Volume 14, No. 1 , February 2000