political correctness in biology?

[Barry M. OConnor]

I recently attended a workshop where one of the participants was a
prokaryote systematist.  As we were discussing biodiversity, he briefly
noted that using nucleic acid probes on a single soil sample, he had
amplified 12 sequences (among others) that were more different from each
other than were all other known sequences (prokaryote & eukaryote).  This
suggests that there's still a heck of a lot of prokaryotic diversity out
there that we are unaware of - the investigator found the notion of
eukaryotic "kingdoms" amusing in the context of "real" biodiversity.
        And I thought we didn't know much about mites!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
So many mites, so little time!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Barry M. OConnor                phone: (734) 763-4354
Museum of Zoology               FAX: (734) 763-4080
University of Michigan          e-mail: bmoc at umich.edu
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1079  USA