We know less about life on earth than we know about the surface of the moon and Mars—in part<br>because far less money has been spent studying it. Taxonomy, the study of classification and<br>hence of biological diversity, has been allowed to dwindle, while other important fields such as.<br>space exploration and biomedical studies have flourished. Like glass-blowing and harpsichord<br>manufacture, taxonomy of many kinds of organisms has been left in the hands of a small number<br>of unappreciated specialists who have had few opportunities to train their successors. To take one<br>of hundreds of examples, two of the four most abundant groups of small animals of the soil are<br>springtails and oribatid mites. Marvelously varied, having complex life cycles, and teeming by the<br>millions in every acre of land, these tiny animals play vital ecological roles by consuming dead<br>vegetable matter. Thus they help to drive the energy and materials cycles on which all life depends<br>Yet there are only four specialists in the United States who can identify springtails—one is retired—<br>and only one is an expert on oribatid mites. The reason that so litle is heard about these<br>important organisms in the scientific literature and popular press is that there are so few people<br>who know enough to write about them at any level<br><br>The general neglect of expertise in the face of overwhelming need and opportunity rebounds to<br>the weakness of many other enterprises in science and education. Museums are understaffed,<br>with too few biologists to develop research collections and prepare exhibitions. Systematics, the<br>branch of biology that employs taxonomy and the study of similarities among species to work out<br>the evolution of groups of organisms, is able to address only a minute fraction of life.<br>Biogeography, the analysis of the distribution of organisms, is similarly hobbled. So is ecology, the<br>extremely important discipline that explores the relationships of organisms to their environment<br>and to one another. A great deal of the future of biology depends on the strengthening of<br>taxonomy, for if you cant tell one kind of plant or animal from another, you are in trouble. Some.<br>kinds of research may be held up indefinitely. As the Chinese say, the beginning of wisdom is<br>getting things by their right names.<br>