| Insects will soon reach one million known species worldwide. Brazil, with about 9% of this total, and possibly another 400 thousand species yet to be discovered, harbors the highest insect diversity in the world. The country has a complement of about 140 active taxonomists, which means a quota of 3,600 insect species per professional. Each Brazilian taxonomist publishes, on average, about 100 species during a professional life span, so it would take 2-3 thousand years to only know the country's insect diversity. Some of the problems hindering the development of insect taxonomy in Brazil are: difficulties with international loans; difficulties with permission for dissecting loaned type specimens; low scientific esteem of taxonomic journals as assessed by... |
