Comparative Parasitology 67(1) 2000 - Peru State College

children. This means, to most of them, domestic
species and the habitats they occupy rather than
wildlands. We are led to a deceptively straightforward
proposition: link economic development
to the preservation of wildlands and the
species they contain, encouraging people to understand
that the plant and animal species in the
wildlands are as valuable as the more familiar
domestic species. In this way, some wildlands
may survive, not as the agroscape, but as another
kind of cropland interdigitated with the agroscape.
This proposition implies developing the
economic and social potential of species living
in wildlands, thus reducing demand for economic
development of wildlands, into still more impoverished
agroscape, which partly sustains yet
more often starves people. Such a proposition
assumes that at least some societies will conserve
biodiversity on some portion of their landscape,
if the wildlands generate intellectual and
economic benefits that pay for their maintenance
and contribute to national economic growth and
sustainability. The preservation of biodiversity is
thus driven, at present, more by social and economic
development than technical expertise
(Janzen, 1992; Brooks, 1998).
People interested in economic and social development
of conserved wildlands can benefit
from forming partnerships with the scientific
community. Such partnerships are required to
meld what scientists have long known and are
still discovering through basic research with the
pragmatic efforts of developing the wildlands as
a third kind of major land use, alongside the
urban and agricultural landscape. Being able to
determine the multiple uses of species and their
combinations requires technical and scientific
expertise and social will (Parma, 1998).
If preservation is to be true and long-lasting,
biodiversity conservation can occur only
through nondestructive use of that biodiversity
by a wide array of social sectors. Effective conservation
efforts will simultaneously encompass
biodiversity development and conservation projects
(Soule, 1991). This occurs by designating
areas for wildland status, finding out what is in
them, and putting that biodiversity to work. In
this regard, a critical element of the scientific
community is the taxasphere (Janzen, 1993), the
global population of taxonomists and systematists.
These issues highlight the critical importance
and rationale for biodiversity survey and inven-
BROOKS AND HOBERG—PARASITE BIODIVERSITY
tory. Although inventory work is fundamentally
important, we must remember that it is only a
means to an end. Names attached to species revealed
through intensive field and laboratory investigations
must represent a significant amount
of natural history, especially ecological, information
for the stakeholders in national socioeconomic
development to be able to assess the value
of each species. The taxasphere may be likened
to a triage team. The "battlefield" is the
biosphere, and the "war" is human activities
that tend to degrade the biosphere. In this war,
every species is affected to a greater or lesser
extent. Some are attacked directly through overexploitation
and others indirectly through neglect.
The triage teams survey parts of the battlefield
as completely as possible, looking for
"wounded" participants. They must be able to
recognize all possible participants and the degree
to which each has been affected (e.g., critical
habitat requirements that are gone or going).
The teams must then pass that information on to
the decision makers, who are responsible for the
optimal deployment of resources to save the
maximum number of participants possible. Taxonomists
communicate such information most
efficiently through predictive classifications and
electronic management of information.
Valuing Taxonomy
We already know much—and are learning
more each day—about the importance of the
documented portions of the biosphere. However,
we have not documented, and thus do not understand,
more than a fraction of that diversity,
with only 1.7 million of an estimated 13 million
to 14 million existing species currently described
(Hawksworth, 1995). Consequently, we
often have no idea what we might be losing and
have only incomplete information on how to
preserve what remains. Faced with our ignorance
and gaps in knowledge, biologists react in
a way that seems paradoxical. They often advocate
extreme caution in development projects,
simply because our ignorance may lead us to
make mistakes and lose habitat and diversity
both in the short- and long-term. At the same
time, biologists understand that caution cannot
impose stasis or inaction. We cannot be satisfied
with slowing the rate at which species are lost
or habitat is destroyed, because extinction is an
irreversible process. We can never bring a species
back once it is lost, and its potential to play
Copyright © 2011, The Helminthological Society of Washington