Biologists describe animals like this as dark taxa, a term that refers to groups of organisms in which the bulk of species are undescribed or undiscovered. Some taxonomists have also called them biology\u2019s dark matter<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cMost people think that life on Earth is described, and we have a good idea of how ecosystems are functioning,\u201d said Emily Hartop, a fly researcher and taxonomist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, who studies dark taxa. \u201cThe reality is that for most species on Earth, we don\u2019t know what they are, we don\u2019t know where they are, we don\u2019t know what they\u2019re doing. They are unknown.\u201d<\/p>\n Center for Biodiversity Genomics, University of Guelph<\/p>\n Center for Biodiversity Genomics, University of Guelph<\/p>\n Center for Biodiversity Genomics, University of Guelph<\/p>\n Center for Biodiversity Genomics, University of Guelph<\/p>\n Scientists who study dark taxa argue that lifting the shadow on these organisms is essential to our own survival. If we don\u2019t know what constitutes our ecosystems, we risk killing off the key players that make them function \u2014 or failing to detect a potential threat, such as a disease-carrying insect that could set off the next global pandemic.<\/p>\n \u201cThe little things run the planet,\u201d said Rudolf Meier, a researcher at Berlin\u2019s Museum of Natural History<\/a> and Humboldt University of Berlin who also studies dark taxa.<\/p>\n Hartop and some other researchers have dedicated their careers to exposing dark taxa \u2014 to making Earth\u2019s unknown known. But filling these gaps is an enormous task and, until recently, considered impossible. The challenge comes down to process: How do you identify millions upon millions of species that are tiny, often look the same, and lack the traditional sort of charisma that funds expeditions?<\/p>\n Dark taxa biologists find hundreds of new species wherever they look<\/p>\n A little over a decade ago, when Hartop was living in Los Angeles, she and her colleagues set up bug traps in backyards across the city. They were mesh tents with openings, known as Malaise traps. Once flies buzz into them, they get stuck and navigate \u2014 rather unfortunately for them \u2014 into a vial of ethanol. The ethanol both kills and preserves the animals.<\/p>\n Over the course of just one year, the traps collected 99 species of scuttle flies, small insects in the family Phoridae that look, to my untrained eyes, a lot like fruit flies. Forty-three of those species were new to science<\/a> and had never been described before.<\/p>\n When scientists look for dark taxa, they seem to find new species everywhere. Meier and his colleagues recently collected fungus gnats in Singapore, and their traps revealed 120 species<\/a>. All but four or five were unknown to science. When researchers went looking for wasps in Costa Rica that parasitize other insects, they found 416 species. More than 400<\/a> of them hadn\u2019t been described yet.<\/p>\n And the opportunity for discovery extends beyond the animal world. Scientists recently analyzed<\/a> genetic codes from thousands of specimens of ectomycorrhizal fungi \u2014 a type of fungi that form symbiotic relationships with plant roots \u2014 and found that only around 20 percent of those codes matched known species.<\/p>\n Why have these organisms been overlooked for so long? One reason is that they\u2019re typically small, often measuring less than 5 millimeters, Meier said. That makes them harder to notice \u2014 and less exciting by traditional standards.<\/p>\n \u201cFunders are much more likely to give you money for birds and butterflies, because that\u2019s something that a funder, who is not a biologist, finds much more relatable,\u201d Meier told me. \u201cIf I want to get money for doing things on dark taxa, I first have to override these biases.\u201d<\/p>\n But a far bigger obstacle is that these groups of life are extremely diverse. There are three species of elephants and eight species of bear. Meanwhile, there could be 1 million species of scuttle flies globally, Hartop said.<\/p>\n That creates a problem of scale. While trapping bugs in tents is easy, it\u2019s much harder to identify them and demonstrate that they\u2019re different from other species that have already been described. Until recently, it was nearly impossible.<\/p>\n We are in the Golden Age of discovery<\/p>\n For hundreds of years, scientists have largely categorized animals by their appearance. A toucan is obviously different from a robin, which is obviously different from a hummingbird. Scientists use these distinctions in form to separate animals by species, typically defined as organisms that reproduce with each other but not with other animal groups.<\/p>\n The study of form, known as morphology, has been used to categorize small things, too, such as moths and butterflies. But for some animal groups \u2014 scuttle flies, mites, and nematodes, for example \u2014 this approach is inadequate. While distinguishing these animals by appearance is often possible, it typically requires an enormous amount of time and expertise; scientists literally have to look at them one by one through a microscope. Plus, looks can be deceiving: A bunch of, say, black-and-blue butterflies<\/a> might appear identical but come from different genetic lineages that make them distinct species.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why a technology called DNA sequencing has been such a game-changer. In the 1970s, scientists figured out how to sequence part of an organism\u2019s DNA, producing a string of letters that corresponds to its genes. They later discovered that they could use just a small snippet of that sequence to tell one species apart from another. In 2003, a Canadian biologist named Paul Hebert dubbed<\/a> those snippets \u201cbarcodes\u201d because they serve as unique species IDs, akin to barcodes on cereal boxes in the grocery store.<\/p>\n Over time, scientists sequenced animals and uploaded their barcodes to databases, helping organize and reorganize the animal kingdom. All the while, the technology evolved. DNA sequencing is now so advanced that taxonomists \u2014 those who classify life \u2014 can barcode thousands of specimens at one time.<\/p>\n It\u2019s this approach that\u2019s helping illuminate dark taxa: Researchers can collect scores of specimens from the field, sequence portions of their DNA, and then upload those bits of code to an existing database to see if they match known species. If not, they might represent something new.<\/p>\n Even with modern DNA sequencing, identifying unknown life is, to be clear, still very hard. A big issue is that there aren\u2019t barcodes for most species that scientists have already described. Museums might have physical specimens \u2014 dead moths or beetles in a drawer in their basement \u2014 that lack genetic data in online databases. 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