ABSTRACT
One of the primary objectives of projects funded by the Planetary Biodiversity Inventory (PBI) Program of the U.S. National Science Foundation is the description of the species that compose a major taxonomic group. In groups such as insects, particularly those that occur outside of the north temperate zones, most such species are neither described nor even recognized among the holdings of collections. Furthermore, the characters that might be useful in distinguishing and characterizing these species are very imperfectly understood. An attempt to comprehensively describe the diversity of such taxa is a major scientific undertaking. Even though we have more than 250 years of experience in what is now called alpha-taxonomy, it remains a slow, labor-intensive undertaking. To compound this problem, the number of specialists willing and able to focus their research time on any single taxon is usually very limited. To aggressively pursue large-scale species discovery and description, the taxonomic community needs tools that accelerate the taxonomic process and maximize the efficiency of the time that researchers are able to invest while maintaining high standards of accuracy and completeness. This has been one of the objectives of the Platygastroidea PBI.
