It came as a surprise to many in attendance that our current taxonomies make the tree of life appear to be rather barren. Our knowledge of the world's species is extremely limited. By conservative estimates, 80% of life on earth remains to be classified. In order to raise awareness of the importance of taxonomic research, Dr. Wheeler and the International Institute for Species Exploration host a "Top 10 New Species" contest that highlights unique, newly-identified species from the previous year. The finalists from 2010 can be seen at http://species.asu.edu/top10. For more information on Dr. Wheeler and his presentation to the HSGP, please see our previous post, located here.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Meeting Follow-Up: Dr. Quentin Wheeler
At this week's meeting of the Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix, we had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Quentin Wheeler speak on the importance of taxonomic research to biodiversity conservation and the greater well-being of humanity. The talk was chock-full of information, but this video (created by Dr. Wheeler and colleagues) does a good job of summing it up:
It came as a surprise to many in attendance that our current taxonomies make the tree of life appear to be rather barren. Our knowledge of the world's species is extremely limited. By conservative estimates, 80% of life on earth remains to be classified. In order to raise awareness of the importance of taxonomic research, Dr. Wheeler and the International Institute for Species Exploration host a "Top 10 New Species" contest that highlights unique, newly-identified species from the previous year. The finalists from 2010 can be seen at http://species.asu.edu/top10. For more information on Dr. Wheeler and his presentation to the HSGP, please see our previous post, located here.
It came as a surprise to many in attendance that our current taxonomies make the tree of life appear to be rather barren. Our knowledge of the world's species is extremely limited. By conservative estimates, 80% of life on earth remains to be classified. In order to raise awareness of the importance of taxonomic research, Dr. Wheeler and the International Institute for Species Exploration host a "Top 10 New Species" contest that highlights unique, newly-identified species from the previous year. The finalists from 2010 can be seen at http://species.asu.edu/top10. For more information on Dr. Wheeler and his presentation to the HSGP, please see our previous post, located here.
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1 comments:
Fascinating! Unfortunately, I didn't see this speaker on Sunday, and now I see what I missed! Thanks for posting the video!
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