Comment by xipho

One of my previous advisors, while working on a PhD in sociality in insects, had a lot of time to spend in a front lawn in New York City. Trained to observe he recorded hundreds of species, on that lawn. Another insect curator I worked with (also from Texas), collected in a nearby park throughout his lifetime (still is I'm sure). Collected well over 1000 species of beetles, alone. Both were highly, highly trained, in a way that is increasingly disappearing. There are many, many other stories like this. That training included as much how and where to look as it did technical assessment (e.g. what you needed to see to identify species). Because of a whole pile of factors, stubborn old-timers, new technologies, lack of foresight and vision, we're losing that expertise rapidly. By the time we need answers from the vast genetic experiments that come from the lab that is Earth's evolution, we'll not know where, or how to look for them.