Keynote speakers

Documenting Earth’s species is a central task of biology. Many have lamented that, in an era when biodiversity is increasingly threatened, we are still generations away from documenting the world’s biota, particularly for hyperdiverse groups such as insects. Analyses of historical rates of scientific discovery have been used to estimate how close we are to inventory completion, but a broad understanding of what drives discovery rates is incomplete. Here we compiled 265 years of taxonomic discovery in ants and examined discovery rates through time and space, the quality of information generated in each era, and the productivity and collaboration patterns between scientists. We examined whether there is evidence for a saturation in species discovery rates and whether such rate-changes were associated with other changes in taxonomic practice. We found that like other taxa, ants had a period of high discovery rates followed by an inflection and slowdown in the mid-20th century. This was, however, not an indicator of taxonomic saturation, and in the past 20 years a new phase of rapid discovery begun with rates exceeding any previous period. We argue these rate shifts reflect changes in taxonomic practice relating to the quality of descriptions, shifts to more collaborative models of taxonomy, and the presence of a relatively few highly-productive individuals. These results indicate that far from approaching saturation, changes in discovery rates can shift due to other dynamic factors in the scientific ecosystem. Understanding these changes can guide future efforts to effectively document Earth’s biodiversity.

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