Article Outline

Article Information


Related Articles

  • …more

Get Bookmark

Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.
Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Volume 26, Issue 4, 154-155, 07 February 2011


Previous ArticleTable of ContentsNext Article


The costs of describing the entire animal kingdom

Fernando Carbayo1  and Antonio C. Marques2

1 Escola de Artes, Ciências e Humanidades, Universidade de São Paulo, Av. Arlindo Bettio, 1000, 03828-000 São Paulo, Brazil
2 Departamento Zoologia, Instituto de Biociências, Universidade de São Paulo, Rua Matão, Trav. 14, 101, 05508-900, São Paulo, Brazil

Biodiversity is one of the major factors underpinning human wellbeing [1,2]. Although the basic approach to the conservation and appropriate use of biodiversity requires identification of its component taxa [], this is, in general, not well advanced. With particular regard to the animal kingdom, only ∼1.4 million of the total 6.8 million species estimated are currently known [3]. By being made aware of these figures, government decision-makers might allocate resources more appropriately to alleviate the shortfall in taxonomic knowledge. We have attempted to estimate the resources required to carry out this task.

To achieve this goal, we used Brazilian expenditure per taxonomist, which we argue represents the approximate average global expenditure per taxonomist. Our data were derived from a survey of 44 taxonomists (almost 9% of the Brazilian community of employed and doctoral taxonomists [4]). These data detailed investments in their: academic education; professional positions (total income during career); training for recently qualified taxonomists; and grants for biological sampling as well as for equipping and maintaining taxonomy laboratories. The survey also included the number of new species catalogued (totaling 1,093 species for 44 taxonomists), and the number of taxonomic publications and general publications generated. The analyses dealt with the most biodiverse animal groups, and were divided into three major sets of taxa (‘vertebrates’, ‘insects’, and ‘other invertebrates’) to better evaluate variation. The extrapolations for the calculation of world costs were based on three main facts. First, 10% of animal species known worldwide occur in Brazil [5]. Second, the Brazilian community of taxonomists has been responsible for most taxonomic contributions to knowledge of the entire Latin American biota [6]. Also, Brazil is among the most active countries worldwide with respect to the description of species and number of taxonomists [ and]. Third, the salaries of Brazilian researchers and professors fall close to the average salary for all professors worldwide [7].

Our data showed that a researcher described 24.8 species on average during his/her career (varying from 1 year to 46 years for researchers in a permanent position), with average expenditures per year of ∼US$ 97,000. These values vary between taxonomic groups (Table 1). Therefore, we estimated that the total cost to describe unknown animal diversity would be ∼US$ 263 billion, notably far higher than the US$ 5 billion proposed by Wilson [8] required to describe the entire biota.

Table 1 Cost estimates for cataloguing animal diversity
World animal species catalogued [3]Brazilian animal species catalogued [5]Cost per species catalogued in BrazilCosts for cataloguing unknown Brazilian animal speciesTotal cost for cataloguing known world animal speciesEstimated unknown world animal species [3]World total cost for cataloguing unknown world animal species
No. speciesNo. speciesUS$ 1,000/speciesUS$ BillionUS$ BillionNo. speciesUS$ Billion
Other invertebrates∼362,15811,000618.722.11,407,57084.5

Historically, the total amount invested to describe one species of vertebrate is three-times the amount to describe an insect, and two-times the amount for other invertebrates [4]. This is because ∼31% of the total number of Brazilian animal taxonomists works on 5% of the known animal species, i.e. vertebrates [4] (on a worldwide basis, these numbers are 50% and 4%, respectively [9]). The future need for greater numbers of taxonomists working on invertebrate groups (particularly insects) is enormous. Considering the vast number of non-catalogued species and the present number of taxonomists, one invertebrate taxonomist would have to describe 292-times more species than a vertebrate taxonomist.

Based on the present average expenditure required to describe one species, we estimate that the total Brazilian and world expenditure previously spent on cataloguing animal diversity totaled ∼US$ 7 and US$ 68 billion, respectively (Table 1). Of this, an average of 15% was allocated to training taxonomists. Salaries to maintain full-time taxonomists in scientific institutions amounted to 50% of the total cost. However, two-thirds of their publications were not related to taxonomy, and these professionals had other duties such as teaching and supervising students, participating in community outreach projects, and bureaucratic commitments. The remaining 35% of the costs was for project expenses.

Although this budget is huge, the main immediate obstacle to cataloguing animal diversity is undoubtedly the small and inadequate number of proficient taxonomists (the ‘taxonomic impediment’). At the current rate (average of 16,000 species per year, see [3]), the present generation of trained taxonomists would take ∼360 years to fully catalogue world animal diversity. Increasing the number of working taxonomists would take a significant amount of time because it takes a long time to train and develop taxonomists.



We thank the respondents to the survey. We also thank Richard Wightwick and Rodrigo H. Willemart for offering a critique of a previous version of the manuscript, Jim Hesson for a review of the English, and an anonymous reviewer for valuable suggestions. FC was funded by FAPESP and ACM by FAPESP and CNPq.


1 United Nations Statistical Division (2005) Millennium Development Goal Indicators Database, Geneva.

2 Chapin, F.S., et al. (2009). Ecosystem stewardship: sustainability strategies for a rapidly changing planet. Trends Ecol. Evol. 25, 241–249. Abstract | Full Text | PDF (378 kb) | CrossRef | PubMed

3 Chapman, A.D. (2009). Numbers of Living Species in Australia and the World. Report for the Australian Biological Resources Study. (Canberra: Australian Biological Resources Study). PubMed

4 Marques, A.C., and Lamas, C.J.E. (2006). Taxonomia zoológica no Brasil: estado da arte, expectativas e sugestões de ações futuras. Pap. Av. Zool. 46, 139–174, [In Portuguese]. PubMed

5 Lewinsohn, T.M. and Prado P.I. (2004) Biodiversidade Brasileira. Síntese do Estado Atual do Conhecimento, Contexto [In Portuguese]..

6 Michán, L., and Llorente-Bousquets, J. (2010). Bibliometría de la sistemática biológica sobre América Latina durante el siglo XX en tres bases de datos mundiales. Int. J. Trop. Biol. 58, 531–545, [In Spanish]. PubMed

7 Russo, G. (2010). For love and money. Nature 465, 1104–1107. CrossRef | PubMed

8 Wilson, E.O. (2000). A global map of biodiversity. Science 253, 756–762. PubMed

9 May, R.M. (2010). Tropical arthropod species, more or less?. Science 329, 41–42. CrossRef | PubMed

10 Singh, J.S. (2002). The biodiversity crisis: a multifaceted review. Curr. Sci. India 82, 638–647. PubMed