RATIONALE
The Problem
It is estimated that there are from 10-100 million species of organisms on our planet. Despite 250 years of morphological work, only 1.7 million of these species have been formally described. The most serious weakness in sustaining current approaches to the study of biological diversity arises from the limited ability of humans to recognize and recall morphological variation. As a result, few taxonomists can reliably diagnose an assemblage of even 1000 species. Given a universe of 10-100 million species, this implies that a community of 10,000 to 100,000 taxonomists will be required to simply sustain the ability to recognize species, once we complete the task of their description. It is this stark reality that provides the motivation for a new approach to species recognition.

The Solution
It is now clear that microgenomic systems, which discriminate life's diversity through the analysis of a small segment of the genome, represent a promising approach to the diagnosis of biological diversity. This concept has already gained broad acceptance among those working on the least morphologically tractable groups such as viruses, bacteria and protists. However, it is increasingly recognized that the problems inherent in morphological taxonomy are general enough to motivate the diffusion of this approach to all life. In fact, there are a growing number of cases in which DNA-based systems have been applied to higher organisms.