Assessing biotic diversity : the glorious past, present, and the uncertain future

Abstract

The recent biodiversity crisis, primarily due to economic models and human population pressure, is paralleled by a taxonomic crisis. The main responsibility for the crisis in taxonomy is the evaluation of the discipline in the sciences. Other factors impeding work in taxonomy derive from practices concerning grants, paradigms in museums shifting away from collection-based studies, biodiversity studies with diminishing effort to adequately identify samples, methods of global diversity assessments, and bureaucratic restrictions regulating field work.