Taxonomy and species surrogacy in the estimation of α-, β-, and γ-diversity: a short review on new approaches

Pressing environmental concerns arising under the current biodiversity crisis are challenging marine ecologists to cope with wide gaps in species knowledge, taxonomy, and available taxonomic skills. The use of higher taxa as proxies for species could represent a potential solution to mitigate this contingent ‘taxonomic impediment’. However, the hidden risk of this urgency is to become, on the long term, habitude (or aptitude) for further dismissing taxonomy. Taxonomy is strictly inherent the concept of diversity, from local to regional scale. Here, we provide recent experimental and theoretical developments for species