Comment on “Conservation of protists: Is it needed at all?” by Cotterill et al.

Abstract

Cotterill et al. (2008) have presented a very comprehensive perspective on current researchneeds in protistology, particularly in relation to biodiversity and conservation. The authors,self-labeled “committed taxonomists” (p. 440), call for a “revival of natural history as thecore discipline in biology”. They advocate “bold initiatives that emphasize the inventoryand description of biodiversity as focal activities in twenty-Wrst century biology” as anintermediate step to remedy “our global ignorance of protists” (p. 439). Suggested initia-tives involve the creation of a web repository in which all the information available on theworld’s described protists could be collated, and a detailed study of the multitude of protistspecies yet to be described.Cotterill et al. (2008) discuss the “practical value” of protists, emphasizing, e.g., theireminent role in energy Xuxes and bioindication. They also criticize what they refer to as“taxonomic chauvinism” (p. 431) or “infatuation with the natural history of organisms” inthe biophilic school (p. 429). Given all this, the heavy emphasis on taxonomy in the recom-mendations made by Cotterill et al. (2008) is perplexing. More signiWcantly, the recom-mendation to proceed to a massive program of species inventories comes after the authorsrecognize that at this stage, one still has a very incomplete knowledge of where protistsoccur in the biosphere, which environmental parameters determine the distribution of pro-tists in speciWc media, and what methods are appropriate to extract protists from their habi-tat, so that they can be counted or characterized. Very little is known, for example, on thesigniWcance of the fractal/multifractal “structuring of ecological resources available to pro-tists at microscopic and mesoscopic spatial scales” as pointed out by Cotterill et al. (2008,p. 433). One could argue that, despite some isolated research on the topic (Young et al.1994; Young and Crawford 2001), even less is understood about the eVect of the geometryof the physical environment, or of the spatial heterogeneity of chemical properties, on thedistribution of protists in soils and sediments. In these systems, because of their size, pro-tists are likely to be conWned to the largest voids, and dynamical shifts toward unsuitably