Transcriber: Silvia Monti Reviewer: David DeRuwe
On the morning of the 1st of May this year,
the world woke up to discover
that Oscar-winning Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio
had been transformed into a beetle.
This is the story of how I made it happen.
But let me start the story with a simple question:
How many animal species are there on Earth?
What would you say?
Usually people say something like a few tens of thousands.
Well no, the answer is probably around 8 million.
And that is because all of these mammals and birds
are just a small fraction of biodiversity.
The true diversity is in the millions of tiny creatures,
such as insects, snails, spiders.
So during three centuries of biology,
we have discovered and named only 1.5 million species.
So just a small portion of the true number.
And, you know, we may have cataloged all the craters on the Moon,
but right here, on Earth, in the 21st Century,
80% of species are still unknown to us.
I mean, that's insane, right?
But why is that?
Well, you know, it seems that these small creatures have really bad PR
because, like most people, even biologists are mostly focused on the big ones.
And there are hundreds of scientists, all over the world,
working on one species of tiger,
but there is only one scientist for every 1,500 species of insects.
And this unknown, unstudied majority is getting more and more important
because human activities are nowadays accelerating the rates of extinctions.
So every day we are losing species
before we even have the opportunity to discover them and to get to know them.
This means there is still a lot of work to do for taxonomists.
Taxonomists are biologists, like myself, whose job is to discover new species.
And I really think that we have the best job in the world, you know?
Like, it's a lot of fun,
and there is nothing we like better than being somewhere out in the forest
in search for new species.
Also, the public expect us to do that.
A few years ago,
the Dutch government set up something called "The National Research Agenda,"
which was an opportunity for the general public
to send in questions they thought scientists should answer
from their tax money.
And one of the main things people asked from biologists
was to discover new species
and figure out how many species are there on Earth.
But unfortunately, at the same time, public funding for taxonomy is going down
because governments give priority to cutting-edge science,
while taxonomy is more traditional.
So we started thinking of alternative ways to fund our research.
And then we thought,
"What if we involved those non-biologists
who, like us, love the idea of discovering new animals?
Kind of taxonomy tourism."
So we started an organization called "Taxon Expeditions."
And what we do is we organize scientific expeditions
for the general public -
so for laypeople interested in nature and science.
And the goal of every expedition is to discover new species.
Participants pay for being part,
and from that money we fund everything -
the whole expedition, the research,
the sponsorship of local students and local researchers,
and also the scientific publications.
And what is very important
is that the outcome is available for everybody.
So all the specimens that we collect on these trips
are deposited in local museums
so that local researchers and conservationists can also study them.
And we publish all our new species in open-access journals
so that anyone can read those papers free of charge.
But how do you discover a new species?
Can anyone do it? How hard is it?
Well, it's actually surprisingly easy, you know?
You just sweep a butterfly net through some jungle foliage
or pick up a handful of dead leaves from a tropical forest,
and it is nearly guaranteed that you will be picking up new species.
In fact, you can probably even find new species in your own backyard.
But the trick is to figure out which ones are new and why.
And that is something you need experts for.
Experts like Hendrik Freitag, for example, from the University of Manila,
who knows all there is to know about water beetles.
Or Menno Schilthuizen from Leiden University,
who is a specialist for tropical snails and slugs.
Or myself, a specialist for cave beetles.
It also helps to have a team of geneticists
with their portable DNA lab,
with which they can read the DNA of the new species.
So put these people plus a bunch of enthusiastic laypeople
in a jungle field station for ten days,
and you have a recipe for success.
And these are some images from our expedition to Borneo.
So this is Aglaya, a novelist from the Netherlands.
And these are photographer Brock from Australia;
college administrator William from Texas,
who really loved this canopy climbing;
anthropologist Tony, also from Australia.
So none of these people is a biologist, but they all have something in common.
They all have passion for biodiversity and heart for conservation.
And what they get during these trips is very unique experience.
So they get to spend ten days in a remote place
learning from scientists.
They discover new species, and they get to give them official scientific names.
But more importantly, they help to speed up the biodiversity discovery
and the documentation of the world's threatened biodiversity.
So what do we do on these expeditions?
Well, our expeditions consist of two parts.
First part is the fieldwork,
where we teach participants all the tricks and the trades
that field biologists are using to collect and to discover new species.
And the second part takes place in the field lab,
where we instruct people how to sort and study the specimens.
We also take apart their genitalia -
I mean of the beetles, not participants -
because this part of the body is crucial to identify different species.
We also extract and analyze the DNA of the collected samples,
and at the end of the expedition,
we all vote and we all together choose names for new species.
And then the whole team works together on a publication,
which we submit to a scientific journal.
So, so far, we had four expeditions, and we discovered 18 new species.
And all of these are, you know,
small animals like very tiny beetles, a minuscule water mite.
And actually the largest species we found was this only two-centimeter-long slug.
But despite their small size,
these animals are crucial constituents of ecosystems,
where they perform many important functions.
And we are very proud of our discoveries,
but usually when we tell people about them, you know,
they just kind of shrug their shoulders
because they prefer to hear about some large mammals
or new species or some showy butterflies.
That's why we have one trick up our sleeve:
celebrities.
New species are sometimes named after celebrities and their trademark looks.
Crazy-hair-colored David Bowie spider.
Or a new species of a fly with a big golden behind
named after Beyoncé.
Or, definitely one of my favorites,
this species of a moth named after Donald Trump,
which has -
which has really beautiful blond hair, as you might notice,
but also a very small penis.
(Cheers)
(Applause)
Some famous people are, on the other hand, immortalized in animal names
not because of their looks,
but because of what they do for the environment.
And on our first expedition to Borneo,
we found this very tiny, obscure water beetle.
It was a new species,
and we decided to name this species after famous actor Leonardo DiCaprio,
who is also, as you may know, a very dedicated conservationist.
Turns out, sometimes having a famous name
attached to what would otherwise be an unremarkable little creature
is the only way for these species to get attention.
So we were expecting this beetle will get some media attention,
but we were absolutely not prepared for what happened next.
So Leonardo DiCaprio changes his profile photo on Facebook -
(Laughter)
to the photo of our beetle.
I mean, how cool is that, right?
Like, this is the best endorsement of our work we could ever wish for.
And of course, the media went wild over it.
I was all of a sudden giving interviews for The Guardian, Forbes, Life Science.
There were videos popping up on YouTube about this.
It was even featured on TV, on BBC Wild.
Black and tiny Leonardo DiCaprio beetle may not win any Oscars for its looks,
but in conservation even the smallest creature counts.
And sometimes it takes a celebrity to transform himself into a beetle
to get people to take notice of this entire hidden world
of unknown creepy-crawlies we share this planet with.
Because they do deserve attention.
Not only because there are so many out there yet to be discovered,
but because the life on Earth as we know it
would not exist without them.
By aerating the soil,
decomposing organic matter, and pollinating the plants,
they are the little things that run the world.
And with our taxonomy tourists, we uncover their secrets.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Thank you.
(Applause)