Identification crisis: a fauna-wide estimate of biodiversity expertise shows massive decline in a Central European country

While compiling our dataset on the number of biodiversity experts capable of identifying a taxonomic group, we soon realized that the level of knowledge is variable even within a single taxonomic group. For example, there are “real” experts, who work on a given group for years, follow the international taxonomic and faunistic literature, would certainly realize a species new to the Hungarian fauna, their identifications are trusted by colleagues, they publish/collect relatively regularly, and have seen the vast majority of the species of the country; and “marginal” experts, who are able to identify a fraction of species with the help of other, more experienced experts and the literature. In our compilation we only counted the former group.

In amphibious freshwater insect groups it is a common issue that one biodiversity expert is working on larvae and another one on the adults, who will necessarily have different sets of knowledge. In those cases, we did not distinguish between them and handled both kinds of experts as biodiversity experts capable of identifying species of this taxon.

It is important to consider the awareness of the general public of the animals they encounter, i.e., what kind of animals they find worth identifying, because interest of laypeople may influence the scientific orientation of future biodiversity experts. For this reason, we collected data from a Hungarian language Facebook page called “Állathatározó” (= Animal identification) during a 10-month period (16 July 2020–17 May 2021). Identification (up to species or genus level whenever possible), classification, name of the person who posted (in order to identify active and less active people for various analyses) and the date of posting were recorded. We note that the number of that Facebook group’s members was 6,017 on the first day and reached 17,008 a year later. This exceptional increase probably was due to the COVID pandemic when people had much free time to post their animal photographs for identification.

We interviewed 42 Hungarian biodiversity experts with expertise on groups that are not among the most popular animal groups. These include true bugs, spiders, Diptera, Hymenoptera, smaller insect orders, various kinds of worms, and even “difficult to identify” beetles. We grouped the experts into two categories based on whether they decided to work on their group on their own account, or whether somebody else (usually an influential senior colleague) suggested or urged them to study a “difficult” group.

We compiled a database of all nation-wide monographs (that contain sufficient information for identifying species of a given group). No such literature list was available beforehand. Therefore all authors, who cover a considerable part of Hungarian biodiversity experts, checked and added monographs to the list after careful consideration of the above criteria. As a second step, the number of species that were covered by each work was added, or in popular groups (e.g., butterflies) where several identification books covered similar number of taxa, we marked that all species reported from Hungary are covered by monographs.

A factor to consider was that the quality of identification books varies considerably. Moreover, for some groups, monographs were written 60 years ago, hence likely being out of date. Furthermore, in case of some groups (e.g., aphids, spiders) species are typically identified based on continuously updated foreign websites. Nevertheless, the sum of all species ever appeared in a monograph is a good estimate on how much of the Hungarian fauna is identifiable based on identification books.

To explore the literature and its temporal trends an extensive and comprehensive online search and data mining were undertaken for faunistic papers according to the following criteria. Those papers were taken into consideration that (1) contain faunistic records (see below) of invertebrates from the territory of Hungary; (2) published in a Hungarian journal (published in Hungary either in Hungarian or any other language) between 1970 and 2020; or (3) available on the World Wide Web, i.e., via search platforms, journal databases or individual homepages (see Supplementary File 6). Compilations and catalogues fit the criteria 2 and 3, as results of long-term faunistic works, and were added to the list too. In addition, monographs containing the results of studies on the fauna of certain territories (e.g., national parks) were also included, although these are not or only partly available electronically.

Vertebrate faunistic papers were not collected, because identification of vertebrates typically requires a different set of knowledge in the laboratory and the field, not easily comparable with those of experts of invertebrates. Also, vertebrate faunistic data collection largely moved to online platforms in the last decades (which would mask the trends), unlike data collection of invertebrates.

By default, faunistic records contain exact sampling sites and dates but, in this study, the following records were also taken into consideration: new occurrence data for larger but well-defined areas (e.g., a certain mountain, lake), or new occurrence data without exact date but with well-defined time interval.

We treated papers dealing with aquatic and terrestrial invertebrates separately, because they require different methods and approaches, and different teams of specialists work on them (for aquatic and terrestrial groups see Supplementary File 6).

After the compilation of the list of papers, we extracted all the names of authors and calculated the total number of articles published by each author in the 50 years period from 1970 to 2020. Those who were the authors of at least three papers were considered biodiversity experts and represented approx. 30% of the authors. For each expert who published more than 3 articles, we defined the active period, i.e., the period between the first and the last paper, regardless of the number and length of gaps (i.e., the years when they did not publish). Among the experts publishing at least 5 papers between 1970 and 2020 (altogether 130 persons), we also counted the number of amateurs and professionals for their taxonomic and faunistic research has been part of their job at least at a given period of their life.

We made a table of all authors and the number of papers they published between 2006–2010, 2011–2015, and 2016–2020. Then, we selected authors who published fewer papers between 2016–2020 compared to 2006–2010 or 2011–2015, and those who published fewer papers between 2011 and 2015 than between 2006 and 2010. We united these three groups, and omitted those people from the list, who did not publish any papers before 2010, because they most probably started their career after the start of decline of faunistic papers. We also removed the deceased. As a result, we got a list of 161 people. We tried to find their contacts, and finally could successfully send our questionnaire to 123 people by contacting them via e-mail or social media.

In the questionnaire, the experts first had to choose between three statements: (1) “My work results in no, or less faunistic data than it has previously”; (2) “My work results in similar amount of faunistic data than it has previously, but I publish my data less extensively than before”; (3) “I do not feel that I have published less faunistic papers than before.” The latter option was given to experts because even if we knew that the questionnaire was sent only to those people who published smaller number of papers than previously, the dataset reflected only the number, not the length and content of the faunistic papers. In other words, it is possible that somebody has published fewer papers but an equal or larger amount of faunistic records.

Experts choosing the first statement received seven questions, the ones choosing the second statements received eight, while the ones choosing the third statement, received nine questions. These questions about the reasons were formulated after initial discussion among the authors of this paper. Experts had to choose between numbers 0 (meaning that they did not want or could not answer) and 1–5 in which 1 meant that they did not agree with the statement, while 5 meant that they fully agreed. All three groups had the opportunity to answer a final question about possible additional factors regarding the decline of faunistic research. The list of questions and answers are compiled in Supplementary File 8.

For the data analysis, we merged the experts choosing the second and third statements. The results of the questionnaire surveys are illustrated in the form of bidirectional bar charts (Fig. 5).

In Hungary, the OTDK (Országos Tudományos Diákköri Konferencia = National Scientific Conference of Students’ Associations) has been organizing conferences for university students starting in 1970, and then from 1975 every other year. While between 1975 and 1999 all Natural Sciences (chemistry, physics, biology, mathematics, geology) were together, from 2001 to 2019 biology was handled separately. The abstracts of all presentations can be downloaded from the OTDK website (https://​otdk.​hu/​konyvtar/​rezumek). From 1988, another Student Conference was held in alternating years from the ones of OTDK. Its name was OKDK (Országos Környezettudományi Diákkonferencia = National Student Conference of Environmental Science) for the first four conferences (1988–1994), and OFKD (Országos Felsőoktatási Környezettudományi Diákkonferencia = National Higher Educational Environmental Science Student Conference) from 1996. We counted all abstracts that require identification skills of an invertebrate group (e.g., covering faunistic and ecological topics). As the target group of the two conference-series was the same, namely students in biology and environmental studies, data after 1994 of the OFKD were pooled for every 2 years (e.g., OFKD 1998 + OTDK 1999) so that they could be compared with the previous ones. In the first two OKDK conferences no abstract book was issued, while the third conference contained selected abstracts, i.e., not all works of the given year. Therefore, only abstracts starting from the 4th OKDK were considered. No OTDK abstract book was published in 1997.

We believe that counting the faunistics-related abstracts of each conference would provide us with the information whether the number of young biologists interested in taxonomy and species identification was decreasing or not.

MS O365 Excel and JASP 0.16.3 (JASP Team 2022) software packages were used for data editing, descriptive data analysis, and charting.

The ability of correctly identifying species largely depends on the characteristics of the animal group. Learning to identify “popular” groups such as butterflies and “unpopular” ones, such as free-living nematodes, requires radically different levels of energy and time investment. Also, the amount of helpful literature and the number of expert colleagues to learn from are likely much lower for “unpopular” groups.

In Hungary, most biodiversity experts, and the vast majority of experts of “unpopular groups” are professionals (regarding the role of amateur biodiversity experts, see under “Trends in biodiversity research”). Nevertheless, only a small percentage of professionals become experts in “unpopular” animal groups. To illuminate what factors determine the animal group a professional biodiversity expert will be specialized in, we interviewed experts of “unpopular” groups. While a few of them choose the “unpopular” groups of their own accord, majority of them started working on their group following the suggestions of an influential professor or colleague at the university where they had graduated or in the museum or research institute where they had been working, a dwindling group of senior taxonomic mentors. These interviews also revealed that at least between the 1960s and the 1990s the general view was that every taxonomic group should have its expert in the country, but one expert per group was sufficient.

An illuminating example is that of Klára Dózsa-Farkas, who, as a student, was interested in frogs. During the first year at university, she started visiting Olivér Dely, the curator of herpetology at the Hungarian Natural History Museum. After about a year she spent learning about frogs, Dely told her that one frog-specialist is enough for the country, so it was time to look for another group to study. Dely suggested Prof. Andrássy, the expert of nematodes, as her supervisor. The thesis of Dózsa-Farkas, supervised by Prof. Andrássy, was the study of animals living in the water pipe system of major Hungarian cities. Since it was mostly nematodes that were found in the analysed water, she became relatively familiar with nematodes and learned to identify them. After she defended her thesis, she was soon granted a position as an assistant professor, while Andrássy suggested her to work on another group, the Enchytraeidae, because one nematode-specialist was sufficient in Hungary. Thus, Dózsa-Farkas started working on Enchytraeidae, in which group her 50-year work resulted in the description of 34 species from Hungary new to science (Dózsa-Farkas 2020).

Lastly, before students choose a taxon to study, they first have to be interested in nature as strongly as to choose to study biology. Being interested in living organisms often was triggered by their parents, spending sufficient time in the nature during leisure activities, having natural surroundings at their parents’ home, etc., which nowadays are often not met (Frobel and Schlumprecht 2016).

Although to a lesser degree than the suggestions of an influential professor, available identification books or monographs can also play an important role in rising a young enthusiast’s attention for a given animal group, mentioned by a few of the interviewed biodiversity experts. Even if over 60% of the Hungarian fauna has appeared in monographic works, most of them were published before 1990, are outdated, and not eye-catchy. Even the ones published recently are not available in bookstores but can only be purchased from the publisher or sometimes a copy turns up in antiquarian book shops. The availability of most Fauna Hungariae volumes online will partly mitigate this issue.

While we now clearly see the current situation of the diversity of Hungarian biodiversity expertise, we lack sufficient information to estimate similar percentages in the past in order to determine trends of the last decades. However, our data suggest that the diversity of biodiversity experts was higher, at least between the 1990s and 2010s than today, and that it will continue to decrease in the future. It is generally true that biodiversity discovery (and the ability of species-level identification) in several of the megadiverse families rests almost exclusively on the shoulders of very few specialists, as demonstrated for marine Gastropoda by Bouchet et al. (2016) and for Diptera by Whitmore et al. (2021). For example, the recently deceased László Papp (1946–2021) reported ca. 2000 dipteran species new to the fauna of Hungary (Soltész and Peregovits 2021). With his death, we lost the expertise to identify thousands of dipteran species. Also, with the sudden passing of Ottó Merkl (1957–2021) Hungary lost its nation-wide knowledge in dozens of beetle families. The expertise of István Andrássy (1927–2012), who published a handbook of three volumes and 1622 pages on the Hungarian free-living nematodes (see Dózsa-Farkas et al. 2012), and that of the extremely actively publishing acarologist Sándor Mahunka (1937–2012) also was not perpetuated by successors. This list can go on and on.

Current, project-based, impact factor-seeking research and publication strategies (discussed below) do not support careers in which an individual must spend years learning a difficult, speciose, hard-to-identify group before the first papers (usually in a low impact factor journal) can be published (Coleman and Radulovici 2000). Instead, high impact publications are required within a very short time after starting PhD studies, or a project. As a result, the taxonomists and biodiversity experts in the Hungarian higher education have almost disappeared, and were replaced by experts in other disciplines, such as evolutionary biology and behavioural ecology. Similarly, the Hungarian Natural History Museum, which has been the national “cathedral” for biodiversity research for 200 years, has been considerably weakened in its role. Furthermore, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences used to have three zootaxonomist professors as regular members in the last few decades. After their deaths, nobody with such expertise succeeded them, resulting in a decrease of support and lobbying power for animal taxonomy and biodiversity research. As a result, there are no highly influential professors in the field anymore, and the chance that a young biologist student interested in birds will be directed towards an “unpopular” group has decreased to nearly zero. This will inevitably lead to further narrowing of biodiversity expertise in the future as bias towards showy taxa, such as mammals and birds, is widespread in organismic science. The late Simon Leather called it “taxonomic chauvinism” (Leather 2009) or “vertebratism” (Leather 2013).

Annual Bioblitz events have been organized by the Hungarian Biodiversity Research Society since 2006. These events have been inspired by the event in Walden Pond (Massachusetts, USA), where in 1998, over a hundred experts gathered to collect and identify macroscopic organisms, and finally reached a reported number twice higher than the previously estimated one (Wilson 2002). During the Hungarian events usually 55–65 experts collect and identify plants, animals and fungi, and the outcome is a list of ca. 2000–2500 species, of which ca. 80–85% are animals. It has been always difficult or impossible to find experts for some taxa such as Diptera and Acari. Furthermore, some of the older members of the always participating leading experts deceased or cannot join anymore due to health problems. In the same time, there have always been around 20 young biodiversity experts at the beginning of their careers (mostly students), although their fluctuation is generally high, as many leave academia or continue their careers abroad.

According to a recent report on European taxonomic capacities (Hochkirch et al. 2022), Hungary is within the upper third in the list of European countries on the Red List Index of insect taxonomists, indicating a still good taxonomic capacity. The 12th position of Hungary is preceded by Czechia, Germany, Russia, United Kingdom, Italy, France, Spain, Austria, Slovakia, Switzerland and Denmark, and followed by countries such as Finland, Ukraine, Poland, Belgium, Croatia and Bulgaria. The population sizes, GDP, scientific history, and richness of the fauna show great variabilities across countries. With this paper, we provide a detailed overview of Hungary’s identification capacities and hope similar data will be made available in future for other countries for comparison.

We show, based on an analysis of all invertebrate faunistic papers between 1970 and 2020, that faunistic research experienced a golden era between ca. 1995 and 2010 in both aquatic and terrestrial invertebrates in Hungary. In the last decade, however, we notice a strong decline, and the number of papers and active experts went down to the level of the 1970s. What factors cause these negative trends?

In the academic world research proposals are won and permanent positions offered based on past publication activity. Instead of the number of publications, rather their quality matters, which erroneously is determined exclusively by means of citation counts and their derivatives (impact factor, SCImago Journal Rankings, H-index, see Krell 2000, 2002). Papers reporting only faunistic data and written in traditional extensive format are very rarely or not at all accepted by journals with an impact factor, which is still widely considered to be one of the main measures for publication “quality” (Krell 2000, 2002), while in fact, it only indicates the short-term attention a paper attracts (Krell 2012). As a result, in the publication rush, researchers otherwise capable of performing faunistic research, tend to abandon it. Even if faunistic data are produced as a by-product of ecological research, they are less often published to avoid wasting time on “useless” papers. Moreover, publishing “raw” biodiversity data is neither demanded nor encouraged by procurers (National Parks, other conservation organizations), which contributes to valuable data remaining in unpublished research reports and field notes.

This was different 30 to 50 years ago, when the number of publications was an important measure of one’s publication activity, especially in Central and Eastern European countries. This old practice was criticized also, as in many cases it encouraged unjustified increases of the number of articles. It was not really fair that a paper of local interest published in a local journal was put on a level with a widely applied research result published in an international journal, but this kind of performance evaluation was more favourable to publications with purely faunistic content than the current system.

The publication pressure also manifests itself in the changes of expectations from employers. As mentioned by several colleagues in the questionnaire, employers (leaders in universities and research institutes) often are not supportive to employees publishing low-impact biodiversity papers.

Overwhelming administrative duties were part of the reasons for less time for publishing taxonomy and faunistics (e.g., Niemczyk and Rónay 2022). It is difficult to objectively judge whether those tasks were fewer a few decades ago, but according to the survey, they were. This problem may specifically affect Hungary (and most likely other Central and Eastern European countries). There, partly due to underfunding and staff shortages as well as due to the permanence of previous inappropriate practices, management and scientific duties are not clearly separated. Institutes and departments do not have a separate leader (and even staff) for the management of operative and technical issues, in many cases a significant part if not all such tasks fall onto the researchers, cutting down their time and, more importantly, their energy for research.

Natural history museums used to be the strongholds of taxonomic research, partly because of their collections that serve as an essential research infrastructure, and partly because they traditionally were among the largest employers of taxonomic researchers. We observe a global shift in the focus of natural history museums towards outreach (exhibitions, shows, parties, informal education, etc.), with fewer positions being available for collection-based researchers (Andreone et al. 2014; Naggs 2022).

Before and shortly after the democratic transition in Hungary (1990), becoming a curator in one of Hungarian museums either in the capital Budapest or in one of the smaller towns was a highly sought-after, intellectual position, which provided sufficient income for the basic expenditures of a family. During those times, museums provided a considerable share of biodiversity publications, and employed ca. 15% of zoologists (Bakonyi et al. 2007). Their impact was probably even higher. The situation changed around the 2000s, when the salaries in those institutes were not adjusted for inflation, thus, became relatively low. Even if some of those museums would provide available positions for enthusiastic young biodiversity experts, young people after finishing university would be unable to start an independent life on the salaries provided.

Furthermore, the situation of the Hungarian Natural History Museum (HNHM) is aggravated by the sense of existential insecurity that has been created among its staff in relation to the museum’s envisaged move to the countryside. Currently, this plan has been apparently ceased for financial reasons. This also seems to be not unique. In 2031, parts of the collection of the Natural History Museum in London will be moved to the Thames Valley Science Park in Reading (about an hour away from the current location) (Smith 2024) after a much more remote location was seriously considered for some time (Naggs 2022). Similar plans have been made public for the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (Paris) with Dijon, over 300 km away, as destination (Anonymous 2023). Moving collections of natural history museums from their original place into remote areas that are often not ideal for biodiversity research, is also a sign of interpreting collections as storage places, and not as active resources for biodiversity research.

Similar trends can be seen in the case of national parks and other institutions of nature conservation, showing a decrease of biodiversity research, partly due to a decrease in the actual surveying and data collection activities by their own staff, partly because of decreasing in funding for external scientists for biodiversity studies.

The decline in the recognition and popularity of science can be observed all over the world (Krapp and Prenzel 2011; Anderhag et al. 2016; Steidtmann et al. 2023) and can be seen in the field of education as well. In Hungary the number of natural science classes is decreasing, already in elementary school. The number of people continuing their studies in this direction in higher education is also decreasing; moreover, the lack of educational reform and the deterioration of quality during the last 20 years at universities is clearly visible. After secondary school, the best students continue their studies abroad (Ginnerskov-Dahlberg 2021). The amount of taught material at Hungarian universities is constantly decreasing and is not replaced by the transfer of modern knowledge or the acquisition of skills and the provision of competences, but rather by addressing basic deficiencies of lower-level schooling. In addition, the underfunding of the education system, the lack of students’ motivation, the low number of teachers and their very high workload also do not help in high quality talent management and in finding and training students who may be receptive to becoming biodiversity researchers (Frobel and Schlumprecht 2016). The Bologna system (Zahavi and Friedman 2020), which has been applied in Hungary since 2006, also did not help in raising a future generation of taxonomists and biodiversity experts. It was more likely for a student to be engaged in an animal group in the previous system, in which they have to write a single thesis during the 5 years period of their biology studies. Instead, under the Bologna system, they have to finish a bachelor thesis in three, and a master thesis in another 2 years.

As mentioned above, the world and science are transforming. It is currently very hard to get funding for pure biodiversity research without “added values”. Large-scale projects of the past, such as the inventories in Bátorliget or the Bakony Mountains, are no longer feasible. In a non-judgmental manner, people and decision-makers do not see and understand the direct benefit of biodiversity research delivering pure data, if it is not translated to, for example, “ecosystem services” or “assessment categories: good vs bad”, i.e., to a more tangible benefit for society. Nowadays, even influential professors are unable to get bigger grants for pure biodiversity research while new generation scientists cannot become influential professors if they only do faunistics without these added values. But if added values and new methods are in the focus, the publication and availability of basic biodiversity records fade to the background or get lost (see above).

Faunistic research used to be requested and paid for by National Parks since the 1970s and 1980s, which were content with receiving long species lists of their fauna. Since Hungary joined the European Union, the ‘classic’ faunistic research has been largely replaced by monitoring of selected groups of species, mostly those flagged as “Natura 2000” species. This resulted in limited efforts being allocated in finding as many species as possible in the field. Even if faunistic data were produced as a by-product, they were often not published because of the low reputation of faunistic papers.

The number of faunistics-related abstracts on student conferences shows trends similar to the overall picture: increase between ca. 1970 and 2010, and strong decrease since then. The reasons for this decrease have to do with the lack of positions and/or the poor salaries of the available positions for such biodiversity experts in museums and universities, and the decreasing number of faunistics and/or taxonomy-oriented supervisors in universities. A lower number of experts in the new generation can easily lead to a negative spiral, resulting in an even more strongly decreasing number of active biodiversity experts over time.

Posts collected from an animal identification social media group revealed that the general public is interested in knowing what animals live around them. Some laypeople can become biodiversity experts capable of identifying species of animal groups, and thus, can contribute to biodiversity research. It is often believed that the decreasing funding of biodiversity research (understood in a wider sense, but mostly referring to taxonomy) is compensated by the high number of amateur taxonomists and biodiversity experts (Fontaine et al. 2012). However, this is a misconception. In that study, retired taxonomists and students were also considered amateurs. This was not and could not be an approach to follow in our present study, because when looking at five decades of biodiversity publications, it is impossible to decide which author was amateur or retired when they were authoring a given publication. Instead, we treated every expert “professional” if they had ever been a professional during their career. Using this method, we found that the proportion of actively publishing amateur biodiversity experts is small compared to professional ones (20 out of 130: ca. 15%). This proportion is similar to the European average of “volunteers” (18.3%, see Hochkirch et al. 2022: Fig. 11 therein). It appears that nowadays, at least in Hungary, once somebody is interested in an animal group early in their career, they will eventually graduate in biology and will find a job where they can use their knowledge in animal identification, or give up.

Our survey on laypeople’s posts on a social media group revealed that they were mostly interested in animal groups that are well covered by experts, and only very few posts target species that nobody can identify in the country. As already shown by Fontaine et al. (2012), amateurs typically study popular, usually large bodied animal groups. Why is it so? Amateurs, who collect, observe, take photos and identify animals for fun, do this activity for their own interest. They need direct experience of success in a reasonable time. For example, identification of large beetles or butterflies is possible with some books available in popular bookstores or e-commerce platforms, and the species-specific traits are clearly visible with a naked eye or a magnifying glass. Probably few amateurs would invest in expensive microscopes or would do time-consuming dissections to identify tiny and hard-to distinguish mites or miniature flies.

Summing up, we neither can expect that amateur biodiversity experts would fill the existing gaps in biodiversity expertise, nor can we hope that the amateurs will compensate for the future loss of professional experts in taxonomy and faunistics. Nevertheless, the 15–20% of amateurs among biodiversity experts, although small, are in no way negligible. Those experts deserve support from professionals to contribute to the knowledge of the fauna as much as possible.

Classic faunistics, which only produces locality data and faunal lists for geographic areas without any additional information, with limited availability, published in regional museum journals, is not what we would like to bring back. Instead, in the training of the young generation of biologists modern techniques must play a significant role, in addition to classic taxonomic knowledge.

The ability of correct identification would ensure avoiding false faunistic data and littering GenBank/BOLD with incorrectly assigned species names due to inadequate identification (e.g., Groenenberg et al. 2011; Radulovici et al. 2021; Csabai et al. 2023). At the same time, the knowledge of molecular techniques could provide an additional set of information to the occurrence data. It can ignite taxonomic and systematic studies (e.g., Rowson et al. 2014) and help revealing the natural history of species (Sun et al. 2016; Csapó et al. 2020; Löbl et al. 2023). Based on the principles of the increasingly important approach of “integrative taxonomy” (Dayrat 2005; Pante, et al. 2015), “integrative faunistics” can be promoted as an approach that does not only produce occurrence data, but, for example, builds barcode reference libraries and helps to make the barcode coverage as complete as possible. Currently, the barcode databases are not yet fully covering the fauna even in Europe (Weigand et al. 2019; Richling and Proschwitz 2021; Csabai et al. 2023), and there are difficulties arising from the application of the single marker approach and from barcode sharing in some groups (Darschnik et al. 2019; Rewicz et al. 2021; Prieto et al. 2021; Dincă et al. 2021; Geiger et al. 2021). Increasing the coverage of the barcode reference databases and fixing errors can only be done successfully with the substantial involvement of competent biodiversity experts with classic morpho-taxonomic knowledge. Therefore, future generations should understand these challenges and must fill the gaps accordingly.

It is necessary to show to early career researchers, ideally during their early training, how biodiversity research can be placed at the centre of a scientific career, so that it represents scientific performance that can be measured even according to current expectations by publications of smaller or larger biodiversity datasets, fauna inventories, checklists, and meta-analysis of biodiversity data in international journals. These journals, even the ones with impact factors and high rankings, increasingly offer the opportunity to present faunistic results in the form of concise data papers that shed light on the structure and main characteristics of the data with some basic analyses in addition to the metadata of the dataset. An increasing number of journals allow extensive electronic supplements containing raw data. Such supplements are an acceptable alternative when the publisher archives them together with the main paper. A very important common feature of the world of data papers is the mandatory open data policy, the free use of data published in global or local online databases, biodiversity platforms (e.g., GBIF, BOLD, iNaturalist), and data repositories (e.g., Dryad, Zenodo, Figshare).

The new generation of biodiversity experts, in addition to compiling, managing, and publishing their own data, must master preparing and publishing meta-analysis-like local or even global analyses for a specific area, habitat or group of organisms, thereby increasing the international visibility of their work. We believe that this will give positive feedback on their work, as a kind of self-stimulating process.

To stop the decrease of number and diversity of biodiversity experts, the next generation’s attention must be directed towards “unpopular groups”, since we can only manage, understand, protect, and use what we know. Most biodiversity experts start being interested in a given group of animals (mostly large bodied, “beautiful” ones), and eventually become experts, while this is rarely the case for groups of tiny or unattractive organisms, which thus remain without experts.

The role of higher education would be to introduce under-researched taxonomic groups to biology students. The attitude of the youth has changed, in that they would like to achieve results quickly, with the smallest possible work investment. Most of them are not at all willing to start a scientific work that begins with 2–5 years of studying difficult-to-identify taxa. However, if we show them the methods and possibilities outlined above at an early stage, then some of them, by the time they finish their university education, may already have the basic knowledge needed to identify a specific group of under-explored organisms. This might be a suitable strategy, using a combination of classic and new methods that will be able to produce visible outputs at the international level within a reasonable timeframe. For “unpopular” groups, there is an increased potential to discover new species, solve taxonomic problems, write monographs, contribute to identifiability of species, which is already a higher level output than a pure list of scientific names.

We recognize that using molecular techniques and data analyses are not the only ways for the new generation towards academic career. There will always be students with interest in morphology. While they should also understand the principles of molecular techniques and quantitative data, robust morphology-based faunistic knowledge of a given animal group can be expanded towards taxonomy, and could lead to a bright scientific career, especially if is associated with cooperation with ecologists and molecular phylogeneticists.

Since learning the taxonomy and identification of a speciose group is so time-consuming, scientometric methods used in other supraindividual biological disciplines should not work the same way: there should be less rigorous quantity control, at least in the early career of biodiversity experts. We do not consider publication pressure a negative factor, since publications are important outcomes of research and the main tools to share the acquired information. Instead, the publication pressure should be more taxonomy-oriented, and should not drive experts away from taxonomic revisions towards research topics that can be published in journals with ‘high impact’.

The presence of citizen scientists (individuals capable of being involved in citizen science projects led by professionals) and amateur scientists (scientists, who work independently out of their own interest and without payment) is probably stronger in welfare states, i.e., it increases with the wealth of citizens. However, as shown above, as wealth grows in Hungary or any given country, the hope that amateur scientists replace missing professional biodiversity experts is only realistic in “popular” animal groups. Biodiversity experts in “unpopular” groups will not come from unpaid amateurs. Biodiversity expertise (i.e., the ability of identifying species) in those taxonomic groups goes hand in hand with the discovery of new species and revising genera, i.e., taxonomy in a strict sense. Therefore, at least for the “unpopular” groups, the solution is the same as outlined for taxonomic impediments: we need more funds and more jobs. However, while in “unpopular” groups amateur scientists would have a smaller role, their importance can be considerable for “popular” groups. Lifting up laypeople to become amateur scientists would require increasing public awareness, by NGOs, natural history museums, universities, national parks, and even online platforms. Nevertheless, we are not naive; a healthy amateur scientist community can only stand on the shoulder of professionals, and if natural history museums and university departments lack biodiversity experts, amateur scientist will have nobody to seek support from.

While bottom-up approaches, such as educating the next generation to become modern biodiversity experts with knowledge in modern techniques, and supporting amateur scientists is important, this may not be enough. Top-down solutions are also necessary, because even if we raise a few skilled young biodiversity experts, they may not find open positions and even if they do, their publication records may not be competitive enough to successfully run for the limited resources and win against hypotheses-driven researchers. In order not to lose the biodiversity knowledge in future generations, changes are necessary on the level of governmental and science politics. There are several good examples to allocate funds specifically for exploring the biodiversity of a country, such as the National Institute of Biological Resources in South Korea (https://​www.​nibr.​go.​kr/​cmn/​sym/​mnu/​mpm/​511050000/​enHtmlMenuView.​do#), or the Swedish (https://​www.​artdatabanken.​se/​en/​det-har-gor-vi/​svenska-artprojektet/​) and the Norwegian Taxonomy Initiative (https://​www.​biodiversity.​no/​Pages/​135523/​The_​Norwegian_​Taxonomy_​Initiative).

By using exclusively citation-based metrics, it is almost impossible for biodiversity experts to achieve the same marks as those conducting hypothesis-based research due to the peculiarities of the scientific field and the established publication practices (Krell 2000, 2002). Therefore, while it is understandable that picking one discipline and handling it independently from the others would sound controversial, we should work towards informing decision-makers in science policy that alternative ways of science evaluation are necessary for fairly assessing biodiversity research. For example, number of occurrence records published can be a better additional metric to evaluate a biodiversity expert’s performance, rather than the number of citations and H-index alone. But this should also be handled with care and on a case-by-case basis, because, for example, identifying land snails is always quicker than that of tiny insects that require careful preparation. Writing identification books, which is one of the most important tasks for biodiversity experts and taxonomists (see below), will not result in the increase of impact factor metrics-based evaluation, but it should definitely be appreciated considering the huge time commitment and future benefit. Methods comparing within subject categories (Q1–Q4 rankings, for example SCImago Journal Ranking or Clarivate Journal Category Rankings based on Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and based on Journal Citation Indicator (JCI)), may improve the situation a little, but since ‘Biodiversity science’ is not an independent subject category, the recognition of more local, data-providing, biodiversity-revealing research also encounters difficulties based on these evaluation systems. Ensuring positions that are open only for biodiversity research is a must, and cannot be filled solely on grounds of citation-based performance. As we outlined above, this does not mean that a biodiversity expert only has to identify animals and publish less inspiring pure species lists. The positions for biodiversity experts have to be filled with people, who are able to transfer their knowledge in international publications and ideally, making it freely available in online datasets. Furthermore, they should be good communicators to the general public. Only these top-down changes, together with the change of thinking, publication strategy and educating the next generation of biodiversity experts, would provide the necessary knowledge to maintain identification capabilities for a country’s fauna in the long term (Engel et al. 2021).

One way to facilitate animal identification for the future is to build quasi-complete DNA barcode reference libraries; the other is to translate the existing biodiversity knowledge into identification books (sensu lato, including online identification platforms as well). As several experts we interviewed mentioned, their interest to become an expert of a taxonomic group started with an identification book. The Fauna Hungariae series, published between 1953 and 1991, was an excellent project, but it has unfortunately ceased. A similar, more modern project is the AidGap series of the Field Studies Council in the UK (see, e.g., Bee et al. 2022), which resulted in the publication of dozens of well-illustrated identification books about the fauna and flora of the British Islands. Initiating similar projects to write scientifically sophisticated identification books should be a priority in Hungary as well as in other countries.

As shown above, a considerable amount of faunistic data remains in unpublished and inaccessible research reports and notes. Funding and outlets should be provided to encourage authors to publish their data, preferably in a format that is more modern than a list of scientific names in a museum journal. Research (e.g., Horizon) and conservation (e.g., LIFE) projects, both programs of the EU, generate a wealth of biotic data. To make their data available to the public (e.g., through GBIF), the publication of data in online databases should be one of the conditions for funding.

Interests of the society determines the allocation of resources to research on, and conservation of, the various taxonomic groups and public opinion (Wilson et al. 2007). For example, in the USA, birds, mammals and fish have a more positive social image amongst the general public than reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates or micro-organisms (Czech et al. 1998). Increased science communication targeting children and young people can be a solution to change this and help to recruit more young biologists interested in invertebrate taxa and change the attitudes of the society in this direction. Social media, influencer videos and public-school education are the most efficient tools to reach these generations. Scientific journal editors, peer reviewers and decision makers in the field of science and conservation also have opportunities to lessen taxonomic bias.