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Lack of well-maintained natural history collections and taxonomists in megadiverse developing countries hampers global biodiversity exploration

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Abstract

Recently, there have been controversial discussions regarding the decline in the number of taxonomists as the main bottleneck for the discovery and complete assessment of global biodiversity. In addition, we here review and highlight the eminent role of natural history collections in exploring the global species diversity by discussing the current conditions of institutional infrastructure in biologically megadiverse developing countries (MDCs). To our knowledge, this is the first critical assessment, which primarily focuses on these biologically wealthy nations. We show that in addition to the taxonomists’ shortage, the lack of well-maintained collection infrastructure represents the main bottleneck for biodiversity exploration in MDCs. No campaign to inventory biodiversity at national or global scale in a foreseeable timeframe can be successful without the creation of more positions for taxonomists and the expansion of existing or the establishment of new natural history collections in MDCs, respectively. Considering the lack of sufficient financial resources in many MDCs, we suggest that joint political priority of industrialized and developing countries should be given to the enduring maintenance and sustainable support of institutional infrastructures, if Convention on Biological Diversity targets for 2020 are to be addressed expediently.

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Acknowledgments

We are very thankful to Donat Agosti, Charles Oliver Coleman, Brian L. Fisher, Bernhard Misof, Robert Neal and Rudolf Meier for their constructive comments and suggestions on earlier versions of the present manuscript. In addition, we thank Alexander Riedel (Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Karlsruhe, Germany) and Francisco “Paco” Hita Garcia (California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, CA, USA) for information regarding the deposition of their (type) material. Finally, we acknowledge the fruitful comments by three anonymous reviewers who helped us enhance the quality of this manuscript.

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  1. André Koch

    Present address: State Natural History Museum, Pockelsstr. 10, 38106, Brunswick, Germany

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Animal Ecology and Cell Biology, TiHo Hannover, Bünteweg 17d, 30559, Hannover, Germany

    Omid Paknia

  2. State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart, Rosenstein 1, 70191, Stuttgart, Germany

    Hossein Rajaei Sh.

  3. Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig, Leibniz Institute for Animal Biodiversity, Adenauerallee 160, 53113, Bonn, Germany

    André Koch

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Correspondence to Omid Paknia.

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Paknia, O., Rajaei Sh., H. & Koch, A. Lack of well-maintained natural history collections and taxonomists in megadiverse developing countries hampers global biodiversity exploration. Org Divers Evol 15, 619–629 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13127-015-0202-1

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