Domains of Life
Efforts to conserve, investigate, understand and manage biodiversity depend upon our ability to identify species. Identifications currently rely on morphological features that are often subtle enough to demand expert opinion, requiring each taxonomist to focus on a small slice of life’s diversity. Because the present catalogue of life includes less than 10% of all species, the problem of gaining identifications will rise in the future. For example, taxonomists have described more than 1 million animal species over the last 250 years, but another 9 million species await formal naming. Because few taxonomists can critically identify more than 1000 species, some 10,000 taxonomists will be required in perpetuity if we continue to rely upon morphology-based identifications. When one considers that this in itself is but a slice of the total eukaryotic diversity (animals, fungi, plants) on the planet, let alone life (prokaryotes, etc.), it becomes clear that new approaches are required.
This sections provides a brief overview of the domains of life and the application of DNA barcoding.