Latest news with #Linnaeus
New York Times
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
In Her Botanical Paintings, Hilma af Klint Hurtles Back to Earth
From 1856 until the 1960s, schoolchildren in Sweden had to pass annual botanical examinations quite literally in the field. Each spring they roamed the meadows and forests to collect 50 to 150 specimens, then pressed, annotated and classified those plants in the tradition of that late great Swedish naturalist, Linnaeus. Hilma af Klint, born in 1862, was one such child. Long before she brought the art world to its knees in a posthumous 2018 retrospective that proved a female artist had made serious formal abstractions years before Kazimir Malevich and Wassily Kandinsky, af Klint was a schoolgirl in Stockholm, where, according to her report cards, she made only B's in the natural sciences but an A in 'Attention.' Fifty years passed. After a public career in illustration and a private one in Protestant occultism, she made attention her theme once more in the floral portfolio she turned to in middle age, with breath-held minuteness, in the spring of 1919, while living on the island of Munso with her ailing mother. The resulting 46 watercolors, never before exhibited, are now on view in the show 'What Stands Behind the Flowers' at the Museum of Modern Art, hung with some 50 other af Klints on paper plus a handful of relevant botanical materials under glass. Ebullient, rigorous and boastfully esoteric, these 'Nature Studies,' as she called them, reveal the didactic side of a pioneer in nonliteral art. This is an economical show of some beautiful field exercises, and it suggests the spiritual extremes to which the honorable but often tedious tradition of botanical illustration might be taken. Hepatica, a relative of the buttercup, comes up first in that northern clime. That plant opens her atlas on April 22 — she dated each species in pencil — with coffee-colored smears of earth. She then paints in noodles and hearts of negative space for the stems and leaves. Then she traces those empties with an earthy-wine spectrum of reds, purples and greens. Hepatica has, like poppies and nettle, hairy stems. So within those stems she picks up the dry edge of her brush with shaggy tweaks, to suggest follicles in sunlight. Up top, in a spot illustration of the blossom, she fills in the bright purple petals but dodges with her brush seemingly microscopic whiskers of stamen. Detail seems to have increased through summer, sometimes seven plants to a sheet, roots and all. The staccato red dreadlocks of a Lombardy poplar in mid-bloom (May 3), the leaves of a Swedish whitebeam that she has wet-lifted with cloth to achieve the right leathery effect (June 16), the kinked stem of a harebell (Aug. 2). All on awkwardly skinny paper resembling a diner menu. That choice makes sense when you see the herbal collection sheets from a different Swedish schoolchild of af Klint's generation, which the show's curator, Jodi Hauptman of the Modern, has displayed for context. They're the same size. In her midlife project, af Klint returned to the scale of grade school, and she arranged her compositions in the manner of plant pressing. (With the exception of a bird and some bugs, her hope to include animals and minerals in the project went unrealized.) Her early professional botanicals, also on display, reveal an important difference in technique. In those she outlined the plant parts in ink. This makes her barleys and thistles look instructional in the manner of an illustrated plant guide. (Several guides from af Klint's day are here.) But the later, more practiced herbals at the heart of this show are largely inkless, sketched in pencil at most. This creates an effect like sun on a living thing. Color and light. All very nice. But what keeps you looking is the evangelically mystical bottom half of these paintings. At the foot of each specimen af Klint has penciled and colored a small diagram explaining, hence this show's title, 'what stands behind the flowers.' In crisp geometries, line work and touches of metallic paint, the pictograms imagine the spiritual states and the motives that she believes emanate from these vegetal beings. Her corresponding notebook, under glass nearby, explains these diagrams in charmingly factual prose. To bird vetch, a creeping vine with hanging clusters of purple flowers, she gives a Fibonacci spiral in brown, gray and black, with colored arrows indicating an inward directional flow. Vetch, we learn, boasts a 'spiritual initiative that uplifts the organs of our soul and body.' European anemone, on the other hand — a flower she captures in both its limp and its fully opened states — gives 'ignorance.' Her symbol for it is a hexagram, the down triangle blue, the up one yellow. And so on for 119 species. Some very efficient exhibition design makes this secret taxonomy at the very least legible — with translations from her notebook in the wall text and magnifying glasses on hand for your scrutiny of the illustrations. (You will need them.) Fall paused the flowers. In January her mother died. By spring, 1920, af Klint resumed her atlas with apparent bleakness. The clammy campion, a fuchsia-colored flower with a sticky stem, stands for 'one-sidedness.' Purple lousewort: 'self-interest.' A sedge: 'gluttony.' A few creatures — an ant, a mosquito, a spider — get upside-down crosses in black, decorated by auras of blood red and gray. However it worked, this particular expression of her moral logic came at a fulcrum. Af Klint had formerly belonged to The Five, a quintet of mediums who held Biblically induced seances in order to transcribe voices from the beyond. In those sessions she scribbled automatically into sketchbooks, which she later transcribed — sometimes collaboratively — in now-famous canvases circa 1906-1908. In the MoMA show, which is almost a mini retrospective, several small solo af Klints from that period, from her 'US Series' (1908), reveal her fixation on the possibility that a numinous reality underpins our visible one. In this context, their shapes seem cordate and herbal, like petals. The same kind of search, though expressed in the harder geometries of quartered squares and Pac-Man-like forms, appears in a wall of her 'Atom Series' (1917) interpreting quantum physics. By her Munso era, she had directed that investigation back toward the visible. Divorced from The Five, she had discovered the Christian occultist Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy and the Waldorf Schools, who, in the old spirit of Protestant mystics dating back to Jakob Böhme, championed the private relationship to God's Word but also pined for the symbolism and mystery of Catholicism. In her Nature Series you can feel those conflicting desires. For one, she is aggressively obscure. Like a Latin mass, the Star of David yin-yang she gives to the pot marigold hides as much from us as it reveals. But at the same time, her herbals want to interpret God's work with the simplest, most public of all evidence. They prove she is a microcosmic thinker in the company of Francis Quarles's poetic 'Emblems,' Walt Whitman's 'every atom,' Joni Mitchell's 'We are stardust' — and an abstractionist, like Georgia O'Keeffe, who based her experiments upon strict observation of her emotional response to the seasons. The odd humility of these paintings makes all the more sense when we consider that this is an artist who had already reached the stratosphere of visual avant-garde. Recall John Cage, who after writing the headiest piece of nonmusic in history devoted himself to the study of mushrooms. Try for yourself: MoMA has planted several of these species out back in its sculpture garden. Better yet, take the train north to Fort Tryon Park, and study untried ones. At MoMA, a wall of bright and hasty energy paintings from 1922 wraps the show — wet-on-wet watercolors with only vague kinships to their herbal titles: 'Oak,' 'Pansy,' 'Birch.' After her years transcribing tendrils and anthers, they are sloppy and fun, like cannonball dives into the placid surface of a lake. They are also less interesting. But they are edgy in their way, and representative of the proto-New Age paintings she would make under the spell of Steiner's theories on color and comparative religion (she owned 120 titles by him) until her death in 1944. These days, galleries are full of the mystical vocabulary that af Klint did much to create: a whole easy-bake coven of painters quoting the Zodiac and Mother Earth in millennial hues that reproduce well onscreen. Like any pioneer, she paid that first tax of rejection. In 1926 she submitted her 'Nature Studies' and notebook to Steiner's headquarters in Switzerland, in the hope of publication. They declined. (MoMA acquired it in 2022.) But a Steiner librarian, writing to her in 1927, did express the consolation that her floral atlas might eventually be 'recognized for its value when the time came for it' and someone 'would have the means to make the work accessible to the public.' High time. Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers Through Sept. 27, Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, (212) 708-9400;
The Hindu
06-05-2025
- Science
- The Hindu
How are species named?
Christening a new species is no child's play. Thousands of animals and plant species are discovered every year. Once these new species are discovered, it is necessary to give them an identification, a name. And the task falls on the scientists who identified the new species. A lot goes into it, and scientists often come up with intriguing names, with some being named after fantastical creatures and celebrities even! In most cases, these quirky names are given to draw attention of the public while some are named as an homage to the personalities. A brief history Naming organisms is necessary to classify and document them, thereby helping us manage them better (such as planning conservation strategies). So how do we name the species? It all traces back to Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus. The formal classification that is internationally accepted had its origin in the 1750s, with the Linnaean system of binomial nomenclature, created by the naturalist. He is considered the founder of modern taxonomy and was the first to use binomial nomenclature. Over the years, Linnaeus's rules and procedures have undergone a lot of modifications. A species (animal or plant) is thus designated by two parts, with the first identifying the genus to which it belongs and the second the species. Take for instance the case of us, modern humans. The scientific name is homo sapiens. Homo is the genus, Sapiens is the species, and we are the only member of the genus Homo that is not extinct. This internationally understood nomenclature is paramount to documenting all the species on our planet. While International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) regulates the zoological nomenclature or the naming of animals, the International Association of Plant Taxonomy (IAPT) controls the scientific naming of plant diversity such as algae, fungi, and plants. Quite often species are named after their characteristics. At times, they are named after celebrities, fictional characters, projects or sometimes simply using some quirky play of words. Species named after iconic personalities Did you know that there is a wasp species named after Colombian singer-songwriter Shakira? Or that an entire genus of ferns named after American musician Lady Gaga? Back in 2022, a millipede (Nannaria swiftae) in North America was named after singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. British nature historian Sir David Attenborough has more than 40 species of animals and plants named after him (and counting, we must say!). Many species have been named after U.S. Presidents. For instance, the first U.S. president George Washington has a parasitic wasp living in Costa Rica named after him, called Heterospilus washingtoni. An ant that lives in the Venezuelan Amazon was named after the English rock band Radiohead. It is called Sericomyrmex radioheadi. But what is the logic behind giving the names of celebrities? Mostly, it is to bring attention to the species whose discovery might sometimes go unnoticed by the public or it can be done as an homage. For instance, while describing the species Sericomyrmex radiohead, the scientists said that it was an ode to the band's efforts at environmental activism. 'Attributing the name of a personality to a species began as a way to poke fun at people. When it comes to naming a creature several aspects are taken into account. Sometimes it is the unique characteristic that might be highlighted in the name or the habitat in which it is found. Sometimes, the species can be cryptic or similar to an already described species. This is when these fancy names come in. They are named after scientists, projects, celebrities, and universities as a means to honour them,' says Dr. Sandeep Das, national post-doctoral fellow at the University of Calicut who, along with his team, has described more than 20 species. A lizard he described has been named Agasthyagama edge, as an ode to the Zoological Society of London's international program, EDGE which works towards the conservation of the Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered species. 'The lizard is also unique and the second species from that genus and hence we chose to name it so,' says Sandeep. There are still debates ongoing in the scientific community on naming the creatures after celebrities. For instance, some names are considered problematic by certain sections, such as the name given to a cave beetle. Christened Anophthalmus hitleri, the species is named after Adolf Hitler. There have been several calls from various sections to change the name as some find it offensive to name it after someone who perpetrated genocide. The species had even become a target of some memorabilia collectors. Species named after a mission When researcher Vishnudattan N.K. described the third marine tardigrade in India, it was around the time India launched its enviable Chandrayaan-3 moon mission. Its landing near the south pole of the moon was a first for any nation to achieve. So what better way to commemorate the occasion and pay homage to this glorious event than to name a species after the mission? And thus the marine tardigrade was named Batillipes chandrayaani. The new species of marine tardigrade was discovered from the southeast coast of Tamil Nadu. 'I thought of the name as a homage to the mission. It was a prestigious occasion. So I thought of naming the species after the mission. Moreover, it could also draw attention to the species and popularise it among the public,' says Vishnu, the lead author of the study and former senior research fellow, Department of Marine Biology, CUSAT. The first marine tardigrade species he described was named Stygarctus keralensis, as a homage to the state of Kerala and the second marine tardigrade species as Batillipes kalami, honouring Abdul Kalam. Species named after places Like Stygarctus keralensis, another species that is named after a state is the Gekko mizoramensis, a parachute gecko, described by the researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Biology based in Tübingen, Germany. This nocturnal, arboreal lizard has been named after the northeastern state of Mizoram after it was discovered from there. Another example would be Pinanga subterranea, a species of palm tree. The name refers to the palm's subterranean habitat. It is the first palm described as one flowering and fruiting underground. Species named after fictional characters The world of fiction, mythology, and fantasy has inspired the names of many species. Not to mention imaginary places such as Hogwarts being the inspiration behind the naming of the dinosaur Dracorex hogwartsia. The fossilised remains of the dino reminded the scientists of the dragons in the 'Harry Potter' series, following which they named the dinosaur after the magical school of Hogwarts. Dracorex hogwartsia means 'dragon king of Hogwarts.' The magical creatures in English writer J.R.R. Tolkien's work are often used to name new species. Gollumjapyx smeagol (named after the fictional character Gollum), Oxyprimus galadrielae (based on the character Galadriel), Macrostyphlus gandalf (based on the character Gandalf), and so on are some examples. Science fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft's mythical creature Chtulhu has also been an inspiration for many scientists. Cthulhu macrofasciculumque and Cthylla microfasciculumque are some of the species named after the creature. Mythology and religion are also sources of names. Catchphrases from fiction and TV characters are also used. For instance, Kermit the Frog, the star of the children's television series 'The Muppet Show' has inspired the naming of Kermitops gratus, a species of an ancient amphibian ancestor. Kodama jujutsu, a species of pygmy squid, is another species name formed by joining 'Kodama', a tree spirit in Japanese folklore and 'jujutsu', a martial art of the same name. The list is indeed endless. Quirky, idiosyncratic names Then there are names that leave you bemused. There is an amusing play of words here. Take the case of Gelae baen, Gelae fish, Gelae rol, Gelae belae and Gelae donut. These are all types of fungus beetles. Orizabus subaziro is a scarab beetle discovered from Oaxaca, Mexico. Note the play of words here. It is a palindromic name. Sometimes scientists choose to rhyme, for instance, Cedusa medusa or go for quirky, humourous names such as Ytu brutus or Inglorious mediocris. And sometimes the species gets a name like Erythroneura ix. The leafhopper was named so when the scientists reached the ninth species of the leafhopper. How are species discovered ? So how do the scientists find these species? Sometimes the species can just surprise you, like how the tardigrade Stygarctus keralensis did. Vishnu was in fact on a different research, as he was identifying the meiofauna (small benthic invertebrates) along the coastal regions. 'It was while the samples were being investigated that the species caught my attention. It was something new,' he recalls. After further investigation, he identified the genus and eventually arrived at a conclusion that the mysterious creature is in fact a new species, a marine tardigrade, thereby becoming India's first marine tardigrade species to be described. The story of the third species is even more interesting. 'When I got the samples and identified the second tardigrade, I observed something that looked like the tardigrade's juvenile. But on further investigations I realised that it was indeed an adult and that it was a new species of tardigrade,' he says. Vishnu and his team have to their credits all three discoveries of the marine tardigrade species in India. The studies were carried out under the supervision of Dr. S. Bijoy Nandan, Dean of the School of Marine Sciences, CUSAT. Knowledge of indigenous communities Discovering a new species can thus be something totally unexpected or it might be a planned investigation. But the role indigenous communities play in species identification is something the larger public may not be widely aware of. Their knowledge is an untapped wealth. 'Local ecological knowledge is an emerging branch in science. Indigenous people may know many aspects of the wild that we do not. They might even have different names for these species. They have a strong knowledge about our forests and its biodiversity,' adds Sandeep.
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
‘We are thrilled': Stone Zoo celebrates birth of Linnaeus's two-toed sloth
Those who went to Stone Zoo got to meet one of the newest members of Linnaeus's two-toed sloth family. The baby, who's seen snuggling up with mom, Lunesta, in the window of the Wild Habitat at the zoo, which is also home to big sister, Sylvie. 'We are thrilled to welcome a new member to our sloth family,' said Pete Costello, Assistant Curator at Stone Zoo. 'As with any new birth, we're closely monitoring mom and baby. Lunesta is an attentive and experienced mother, and we are pleased to see everything going well so far. The baby has been observed nursing, its eyes are open, and it's moving around well. For the first month, the baby will hold on tightly to Lunesta.' The baby is the eighth child to Lunesta and her mate, Nero. The breed, Linnaeus's two-toed sloth, is part of the Species Survival Plan (SSP), which is a cooperative, inter-zoo program that is coordinated nationally through the Association of Zoos and Aquariums to ensure the survival of endangered species. This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available. Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW
Korea Herald
10-04-2025
- Business
- Korea Herald
Helio Fujita joins Mars as Global People & Organization VP for Petcare business
BRUSSELS, April 10, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Mars named Helio Fujita as Global People & Organization VP for their leading pet health, services, and nutrition business. Fujita, who will join the business in July, will lead the people & organization function for the $30B+ Petcare business, reporting to Loïc Moutault, President of Mars Petcare. Fujita is a distinguished HR leader with over 25 years' experience in diverse industries—including health, pharmaceuticals and automotive. He brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the Mars business. Loïc Moutault, Mars Petcare Global President said:"We're thrilled to welcome Helio to Mars. His combination of deep experience across HR and commercial strategy coupled with his proven track record in building organizational capabilities to drive business growth will be incredible assets to our team. We are confident he will make a significant contribution to our business, our people agenda and in driving our purpose: A BETTER WORLD FOR PETS." On joining Mars Petcare, Helio Fujita commented:"The Mars Petcare business is one that I have admired, their transformation over the last decade has been hugely impressive and Mars is an organization known for its special company culture and Principles. I'm excited to join the team." Fujita's career spans roles at leading global organizations, most recently at Fresenius Kabi, a global healthcare company specializing in lifesaving medicines and technologies. He has also held senior leadership positions across other leading healthcare companies including Abbott, Novartis and Sandoz gaining experience in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, as well as Europe. Rebecca Snow, Mars, Incorporated VP People & Organization/CHRO, added:"Helio brings a wealth of HR and business transformation experience across diverse industries and geographies, which will strengthen our People & Organization function across Mars and drive real business impact in Mars Petcare. We are excited to welcome him to our team." Mars Petcare believes that pets make the world a better place and are inspired to deliver on our purpose: A BETTER WORLD FOR PETS – a world where they're healthy, happy and welcome. A global leader in pet care, spanning comprehensive veterinary care (including: AniCura, BANFIELD™, BLUEPEARL™, Linnaeus and VCA™), nutrition (including PEDIGREE®, ROYAL CANIN®, and WHISKAS®), breakthrough programs in veterinary diagnostics (ANTECH®), wearable health monitoring and pet parent platforms. With over 100,000 Associates helping pets, their owners and pet professionals in more than 130 countries. About Mars, Incorporated Mars, Incorporated is driven by the belief that the world we want tomorrow starts with how we do business today. As a $50bn+ family-owned business, our diverse and expanding portfolio of leading pet care products and veterinary services support pets all around the world and our quality snacking and food products delight millions of people every day. We produce some of the world's best-loved brands including ROYAL CANIN®, PEDIGREE®, WHISKAS®, CESAR®, DOVE®, EXTRA®, M&M'S®, SNICKERS® and BEN'S ORIGINAL™. Our international networks of pet hospitals, including BANFIELD™, BLUEPEARL™, VCA™ and ANICURA™ span preventive, general, specialty, and emergency veterinary care, and our global veterinary diagnostics business ANTECH® offers breakthrough capabilities in pet diagnostics. The Mars Five Principles—Quality, Responsibility, Mutuality, Efficiency and Freedom—inspire our 150,000 Associates to act every day to help create a better world for people, pets and the planet.
CBC
20-02-2025
- Science
- CBC
As biodiversity declines, researchers race to name millions of species unknown to science
In a time of unprecedented biodiversity loss — what's in a name? In 2023, scientists announced a startling discovery in the Pacific Ocean — in a site proposed for deepsea mining, the seafloor was not a barren wasteland, but a rich underwater garden, bustling with life — thousands of undiscovered life forms, to be precise. The discovery of so many species unknown to science raised concerns about unintended impacts, but it also highlighted an unsettling fact about our relationship with the natural world: 86 per cent of land species and 91 per cent of marine species remain undiscovered. Of an estimated 10 million species on the planet (though some estimates put the number much higher), only two million have been named by science. With growing threats to the world's biodiversity, scientists fear we're running out of time to classify the life around us — with unknown consequences for people, and the planet. "I just don't think you can [be] fully… empathetic to the plight of species that you don't know, that are just sort of abstract concepts out there or numbers," said American entomologist and taxonomist Quentin Wheeler. "Until we've actually seen them and observed them and described what makes them unique among all the millions of living things… it's very difficult to fully appreciate what we're on the verge of losing." The revolution of taxonomy The sorting of the natural world goes back to ancient times, though it developed into our scientific system of classification with the work of the 18th-century Swedish naturalist and physician Carl Linnaeus. There's also evidence that categorization is a deeply held human impulse — people with damage to their temporal lobe struggle to recognize and classify living things (though not inanimate objects), suggesting that the taxonomic impulse is rooted in our physiology. Meanwhile, acquiring the ability to categorize is a core step in infant development, and classifications for the natural world share similarities across cultures — in a sense, we're categorizing machines. As developed by Linnaeus, taxonomy — which is the science of naming, describing, and classifying groups of organisms based on shared characteristics — revolutionized the science of classification, creating a system that aimed to classify all life, as well as a two-part naming system for species, called binomial nomenclature, that's still in use today. But Linnaeus' system has also been criticized for its limitations: from its implicit and sometimes explicit connections to racist ideology, to its inability to account for evolution. He believed that all species were created in their current form by God, and that nature reflected a divine plan. "The basic assumption that Linnaeus brought to organizing the natural world was that all of nature was a noun, and by that I mean that he believed that it was a static creation," said Jason Roberts, author of Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life. "But as we understand, the concept of evolution was controversial even in Darwin's day, you can imagine how controversial it was a century earlier." A decline in expertise In the 20th century, however, taxonomy has adapted, offering new ways to trace the branching of life that have returned some surprising conclusions — for instance, in modern taxonomy, Linnaeus' class for fish is no longer used, since there's no common ancestor that includes all the fish in the water. And birds have since been grouped in with reptiles — they're most closely related to crocodiles. These advancements have created a taxonomic system based squarely on the science of evolution. Yet taxonomy, as a science, is dying. In a 2023 study published in the journal Diversity, researchers noted that the field had been in decline for generations, leading to a loss of taxonomic expertise at a time of increasing biodiversity loss. "There are a number of major natural history museums that have half as many taxonomists on staff now as a generation ago — some of them even fewer, which is really alarming," said Wheeler. Scientists say restoring the prestige, and the funding, for taxonomic work is an essential part of stemming this decline — it also serves a practical purpose, as it helps ensure that researchers can communicate about species more easily for conservation purposes. 'A reflection of who you are' But scientific classification is not the only form of classifying life. In Ontario, three friends are working on a guide to bird names in Anishinaabemowin, the language of the Anishinaabe, the Indigenous people of the Great Lakes region of North America. While the project started to figure out which Anishinaabe names apply to which species — so far, they've documented more than 170 — it's grown into something much bigger, said creator Joseph Pitawanakwat. "All we wanted was to be able to know which name belongs to which bird. But you end up uncovering and unlocking so many incredible opportunities and avenues along the way." One of those avenues has been the Anishinaabe taxonomy that Pitawanakwat, along with collaborators Andrés Jiménez Monge and Junaid Shahzad Khan, have begun to explore. The Anishinaabe system weaves life together with a series of linguistic threads. "That grouping will…not necessarily be based on similar physical characteristics or evolutionary closeness," said Jiménez Monge. "If you start decomposing the names and which other parts the names have, then you start understanding that these are not boxes. These are threads." These threads fully entwine humans in the web of nature. Within one animal's name, like that of the common raven, there could be references to a certain tree, to other animals that rely on that tree, to the human body part (the uvula) required to imitate the raven's call. Pitawanakwat said on a guided walk, one participant reflected that the Anishinaabemowin language connected humans to other species. "She said…to be able to go outside and wander through the natural world and….if she was using our language, there would be no way that she could separate herself from everything that she was describing," Pitawanakwat said. "It's like everything that you speak of when you're out there is a reflection of who you are. And so you… cannot even begin to define yourself without having a fair and full understanding of everything that's around you outside." Still, Jiménez Monge said this isn't about replacing one system of classification with another. Instead, there's value in exploring all forms of knowledge. And as the world's biodiversity is under increasing threat — with some scenarios estimating that up to a third of species are at risk of going extinct — naming, in all its forms, can help our beautiful, fragile world endure. "It's too easy to just have kind of a green backdrop to our lives and not really care whether it's made of a large number of species or just a handful," said Wheeler. "The more we learn about species and their morphology and their geography and their natural history, the more likely we are to value them and to make some of the sacrifices that humans will have to make to leave enough room on the planet for them to survive too." *This episode was produced by Moira Donovan and Mary Lynk. Guests in this episode: Joseph Pitawanakwat, Andrés Jiménez Monge and Junaid Shahzad Khan are working on the Anishinaabemowin bird names project. Quentin Wheeler is an American entomologist and taxonomist.
