Resumo

VILLASENOR, José Luis. The biodiversity crisis is the taxonomy crisis?. Bot. sci [online]. 2015, vol.93, n.1, pp.03-14. ISSN 2007-4476.  https://doi.org/10.17129/botsci.456.

We will achieve the commitment of integrating a floristic list that reflects the knowledge of the Mexican plant diversity in the short term only with a solid body of plant taxonomists. Unfortunately, it seems that such body of specialists rather than strengthening is decaying. The goals of this paper are to discuss the role played by the Mexican taxonomists in the knowledge of the flora of Mexico and its current human capital, and to analyze the updated floristic knowledge and its relevance for the biodiversity conservation strategies. Novel approaches would help to complement our taxonomic knowledge by defining additional areas of richness and endemism (hotspots) that supplement or make more efficient our national system of natural protected areas. The main results point out that the rate of description of new species suggests there is still a significant bias in knowing the total number of species in the Mexican flora, but each year an important number of them, either as new species or new records, are added. Much of the discovery of this missing diversity is achieved with specialized review of the scientific collections, although the number of taxonomists has dramatically decreased. Some emerging lines of research that help to define better strategies for searching and analyzing biodiversity are discussed; they will surely facilitate the work of exploration and investigation of this unknown component of plant diversity of the country. It is proposed that avoiding the actual crisis of taxonomy we will minimize the biodiversity crisis. Unfortunately the disappearance of taxonomist in the world (and Mexico is not an exception) is due mostly to the actual way to evaluating the academic productivity, to the difficulty of obtaining grant resources for taxonomic studies, as well as to the low impact factor of journals were their results are published. Changes are necessary to avoid considering taxonomists an endangered species.

Palavras-chave : biomes; floristics; hotspots; Mexico; plant diversity; scientific collections.

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