This is in response to Brendan McGarry's post below.

Brendan,

I can relate to what you say big time, as "discovery and
exploration" (the biodiversity meaning, not the human-conquest
meaning) have long motivated me as a biologist.

I suppose that's one of the reasons I switched from intensely
studying birds to intensely studying dragonflies (while losing none
of my interest in birds). You still can find undescribed species of
birds, but you do indeed have to go to remote areas to do so, usually
on well-planned expeditions. New avian species have been discovered
in most of the countries of South America in recent years, and I'm
not talking about all the splits that have taken place in already-
known species. But we are nearing the asymptote of basic description
of bird diversity, I suspect.

But discovery and exploration are still available in a big way. Even
in ornithology, there are so many things we don't know about birds
that it's possible to contribute unendingly to that knowledge. Yes,
it's not the world presented to Audubon or von Humboldt or Darwin,
but at least you can be the first on your block to record the
vocalization of some tropical bird or find its nest. I recall after
finding two Buff-breasted Sandpiper nests in the Arctic learning that
the incubation period of the species had never been reported, and I
was so tickled that I actually determined that for one of the nests.
And that wasn't that long ago.

Or you have another avenue open to you. Get into entomology! Rarely
have I made any extended trips to the tropics of any continent
without discovering undescribed species of dragonflies. This is a
fairly well known and well studied insect order, yet there aren't
enough working taxonomists now to describe all the undescribed
species we have in collections (I have around 30 still, from all over
the world). We find them faster than we can prepare taxonomic
descriptions of them. Almost every year a new species of dragonfly is
found in North America, and there are still hundreds to be found in
the New World Tropics. There are 5600 described species, and we
estimate there may be as many as 8000 in the world. The situation is
far more extreme in beetles, with astronomical numbers of described
species and a heck of a lot of undescribed ones. You may know they
discovered a new ORDER of insects in Namibia a few years ago,
although that's a very unlikely event.

And of course, that's just insects. The number of species of fishes,
amphibians, and reptiles still to be discovered and described is also
impressive. Dozens of species of these groups are being described
every year. And all of the invertebrate groups badly need more field
work, especially in the tropics and the oceans.

The reason I make this point is that not only are the wild places
disappearing, but their inhabitants of all sizes and shapes are doing
so, as we all know, many of them before they are even known. We badly
need people who are interested in biodiversity and like the thrill of
discovery to become taxonomists and field workers to help catalog the
life on earth before it disappears in an onrush of human population.
This has been called the Taxonomic Imperative and has attracted much
interest, but like so much of what is really important, it is
underfunded.

I wish you luck in finding some of those special places. I should add
that in my exploration and discovery of dragonflies, I get to see a
lot of great birds too!

Dennis

Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
206-528-1382
-------------------

Date: Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:33:28 +0000
From: uglyduckling at comcast.net
Subject: [Tweeters] Exploration?
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Message-ID:

<020820060033.12051.43E93C58000A486000002F13220076018009020704050C9A0B97
04099A at comcast.net>


Hey Tweeters,
Please excuse me if this is not an acceptable
topic for
Tweeters but the post on the rediscovery of Berlepsch's Six-wired
Bird of
Paradise put me in a rather somber and thoughtful mood. While I was
wowed by
this rediscovery and excited by the thought of an untouched land it
also made me
think about my future. I have doubts that in my lifetime I will be
able to
explore a new land and that makes me very sad.
At age 20 I am half way through my sophomore year of my
undergraduate
career and if I continue on my educational track towards ornithology
it will be
many years before I am able to go on an expedition of these
proportions (with
the assumption that by the time I am done there will be places left
to explore).
I am not trying to sound pessimistic, but it?s a saddening thought
that one of my
biggest desires (and one I am working toward academically) could not
be an option open to me. My understanding of areas unexplored is
limited but from what I know there are very few areas with the
exception of small areas of the Andes, Southeast Asia, and Africa
that have not been visited by man in his quest for knowledge. Unless
by some unusually auspicious fate I am allowed to accompany an
expedition somewhere into one of these mystical regions during work
on a doctorate, these lands of mist will have been gobbled up by
older explorers of a similar creed as myself.
Then again maybe these areas are not meant to be visited by
man. For the sake of the probably fragile populations of species
there, maybe people shouldn't cause a disturbance for knowledge.
Still, I doubt I could convince myself to not venture into the heart
of New Guinea or another remote region if the opportunity arose.
Sometimes I dislike the words discovery and exploration because of
the Western dominance inherently apart of such terms but I lack
appropriate substitutes. Most people can believe that exploration
brings positives and negatives.
Of course there are always places to be observed more closely
but the
romanticism in me wants to visit areas unknown. This probably has
something to do with the fact that I know I will be a part of many
studies of more familiar species. Still, we as people know only so
much about the natural world; discoveries can happen in your backyard
as well as a foreign land. The lust for new information is something
that most people can commiserate with and it's something that is hard
for me to shake. These are my humble thoughts, an escape from a lab
report on fruit fly genetics I should be writing on this beautiful
February day. Maybe I don?t fully understand the land of academia
and my worries about lack of opportunities are unfounded. I hope
people will not find this pretentious and will ignore or correct any
ignorance incorporated in my musings.

Good Birding and Explorations

-Brendan McGarry
uglyduckling at comcast.net
Olympia (Evergreen State College)/Seattle, WA