Abstract:
1. A parataxonomist is a resident, field-based, biodiversity inventory specialist who is
largely on-the-job trained out of the rural work force and makes a career of providing
specimens and their natural history information to the taxasphere, and therefore to a
multitude of users across society.
2. Any large inventory effort will benefit from a team of parataxonomists, not only
through the large quantity of material and information they will gather and process, but
through its among-year and within-season continuity.
3. Parataxonomists’ accuracy increases substantially with pride of workplace ownership,
experience, and detail and continuity of iterative feedback from users of specimens
and information.
4. Being drawn from the pool of rural workers into activities that are normally the privilege
of university-educated citizens, parataxonomists require continuous mentoring
and encouragement to compensate for their potential social isolation from their former
peer groups and the defensive disdain with which they may be treated by more elevated
social classes.
5. Synthesis and applications. Parataxonomists are a key element in setting up wild
biodiversity for non-damaging sustainable development, not only through finding and
making biodiversity available, but also by being employed locally by its development.
The parataxonomist is to the neighbouring forest as both a literate person and a reference
librarian are to a library.
