Researchers keep identifying new species, but they have no idea about the life cycle of a given species or its other hosts. They cut open an animal and find a new species. Where did it come from? What effect does it have on its host? What is its next host? They don't know and they don't have time to find out, because there are too many other species waiting to be discovered and described.
Interpretation
Scientists often discover new species without fully understanding their biology or ecological roles.
This quote by Carl Zimmer highlights the challenges faced by researchers in the field of biology, particularly in the area of taxonomy and ecology. It emphasizes the rapid pace at which new species are being identified, yet points out the lack of understanding regarding their life cycles and interactions with other organisms. The urgency of discovery often overshadows the necessity of in-depth study, leading to gaps in knowledge about newly found species and their ecological significance.
In practice
In a biology conference, one might use this quote to stress the importance of understanding ecological interactions.
At long last, we may be returning to the original two-sided sense of the word virus, which originally signified either a life-giving substance or a deadly venom. Viruses are indeed exquisitely deadly, but they have provided the world with some of its most important innovations. Creation and destruction join together once more.
There is always the danger in scientific work that some word or phrase will be used by different authors to express so many ideas and surmises that, unless redefined, it loses all real significance.
As Darwin himself was at pains to point out, natural selection is all about differential survival within species, not between them.
Civilization begins with distillation
A physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself.
If we estimate dignity by immediate usefulness, agriculture is undoubtedly the first and noblest science.
Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow struck by this simple experiment.
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