THE FUTURIST Interviews Quentin Wheeler, Biologist, on the Future of Biodiversity

Scientists have identified about 2 million animal species on this planet, but there could be another 10 million yet to be discovered, according to a report by Arizona State University biologist Quentin Wheeler and 39 fellow researchers in the March edition of Systematics and Biodiversity. The good news, according to Wheeler et al.: Thanks to digital technology and increasing collaboration between scientists and the public, the world could find all 10 million in the next 50 years. That is, if human population growth and destruction of wildlife habitats don’t wipe out many of these species first.

Wheeler discussed his outlook for species exploration and conservation in this interview with Rick Docksai, a staff editor for THE FUTURIST. Note: THE FUTURIST will publish a feature about Wheeler and the future of biodiversity in the months ahead.

Quentin Wheeler

THE FUTURIST: It sounds like the game is really changing for researching the world’s wildlife. What changes are you seeing?

Quentin Wheeler: The loss of species taking place now is frightening. If we don’t adequately discover and characterize the species, most of the data will be unavailable to future generations.

But the technological developments on the ground are two-edged swords. One example is molecular data. It allows us to do things we couldn’t do before. On the other hand, it can be misused. DNA bar coding, in particular: Researchers create species databases that take one short fragment of one gene—about 650 base pairs per specimen—and they say that’s enough information to identify every species. We know that it’s not that simple.

THE FUTURIST: Why are species extinctions so frequent now?

Wheeler: It’s the impact of human population growth and human activities—the reduction and loss of habitats. Most species have rather narrow geographic distributions. So if you destroy or seriously damage the places where they live, they disappear.

I also point out that we don’t know what species exist. And that’s the other urgency: so that we have a baseline for knowing who’s going extinct, how fast, and where. And society will then have the option of accelerating efforts to protect them.

And I am a strong believer that we have to put a face on biodiversity. Until we learn what we’re actually losing, it’s going to be hard to get people concerned enough.

THE FUTURIST: We’ve been classifying species for centuries. What do you see us doing differently?

Wheeler: It’s really how we do what we do. We’re still dependent on print media. It’s imperative that we speed things up. By using off-the-shelf technology, we could increase the speed of species classification. As we learn more about the biosphere and target our efforts more scientifically, I believe we can increase our results.

THE FUTURIST: You and your colleagues wrote that you see a growing role for “amateur” taxonomists. Can you tell me more about that?

Wheeler: Amateurs’ contributions could only go so far in the past. And as we digitize more information, people will be able to go much farther. We’ll be able to not only share our results with citizen scientists, but actually help them do the work.

One project we are developing now is “remote” microscopes that could photograph the specimen from multiple angles. We could create 3-D images of unknown specimens that we’re collecting and post the images onto Web pages. With auto-tutorials, citizen scientists could learn to distinguish the characters that we’re discerning and then go online and help us look for them in specimens. People can sit in their living rooms and be part of our team.

THE FUTURIST: That sounds like a great way for scientists to engage with the public like never before.

Wheeler: I couldn’t agree more. I see these great opportunities to excite young people. As long as we wall it off in ivory towers, then we shouldn’t be surprised that more kids don’t have an interest in becoming scientists. This accessibility is key.

The other dimension of this is natural-history collections. With emerging cyber infrastructure, we can think about linking natural history museums around the world into one research platform, so that any time I collect a specimen, the expert in that area from anywhere on the planet can examine it. That keeps all the databases more up to date and makes sure that we make policy decisions based on up-to-date data.

THE FUTURIST: Many of these hitherto-undiscovered species’ habitats lie within developing countries—the Amazon, Africa’s Sahel, et cetera. Many developing countries’ socioeconomic problems—i.e., poverty, urban sprawl, and rapid construction—lead to poaching, deforestation, and pollution, and may continue to do so. What prospects do you see for improving these ground-level conditions?

Wheeler: I take heart that over the last 20 years, we’ve seen rates of deforestation going down, and that there is recognition growing in developing countries that conservation can have value. And as we learn more about the Earth’s animal species, I think whole new economy will open up that will offer many new incentives to keep species around.

Janine Benyus wrote a wonderful book called Biomimicry that gives a lot of examples about how engineers have looked at models of nature to create solutions to problems in design. Engineers were looking at plant leaves, and they created a paint that cleans itself, just like the leaves’ surfaces. You paint it onto a house’s walls. And dust and particulate matter may accumulate, but when it rains, the water just washes the impurities away.

Another example was an architect in Zimbabwe working on an office building. He had read about termites in Australia where even though there’s a huge range of temperature in the termites’ desert habitat, the temperature in their nests stays within a couple degrees centigrade year-round. The architect studied the nests and then designed a building that uses 90% less energy to cool itself than a normal office building. We have to connect the dots between people searching for these types of solutions, and taxonomists who are discovering these solutions in the natural world.