Observational natural history and morphological taxonomy are indispensable for future challenges in biodiversity and conservation

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Global biodiversity is rapidly declining, leading inevitably to a loss of ecosystem functionality when species and their associated life-history traits vanish. Unfortunately, even in the 21st century, a large proportion of Earth's species are yet unknown and also for most described species science lacks a deeper understanding of the functional role of species and thus of ecosystems. In this Addendum we use the recent discovery of a new spider wasp with a unique natural history as an example to emphasize the importance to conduct basic observational natural history and traditional taxonomic research. We aim to encourage such 'old-fashioned' research and biologists from various research fields to report the many fascinating phenomena holding valuable natural history information they may encounter. Such detailed knowledge on species, their life-history traits, and their trophic interactions will be crucial to reliably address the challenges global change brings to the persistence of ecosystems.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere992745
JournalCommunicative and Integrative Biology
Volume8
Issue number1
Number of pages3
ISSN1942-0889
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 02.01.2015

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

    Research areas

  • BEF-China, Ecosystem functioning, Global change, Integrative taxonomy, Species extinctions, Species interactions, Trait characteristics
  • Biology
  • Ecosystems Research