E.O. Wilson looks at an ant nest in the Dominican Republic. (Photo: Brian Farrell)

Nowadays, he's perhaps best known as a spokesperson for conservation. Wilson even coined the terms biodiversity and biophilia. But today, in his Harvard office, we’re talking ants. He carefully picks up one of the tiny insects and places it under his microscope.

WILSON: Now I'm going to sit down, and get the specimen under the scope so it can be viewed properly, and get the magnification down first so we can locate the specimen and line it up in the correct position.

TOOMEY: Before he leans towards the microscope, Professor Wilson flips back a lock of his hair. And in that moment, and despite the fact he's dressed in professorial tweed, the expectant look of a boy comes over his face.

WILSON: Caltrop! And this one is called caltrop because it has long needlelike spines on the back of the middle part of its body and it made me think of a caltrop. You know this triangular spine weapon that used to be thrown on the ground in ancient warfare.

TOOMEY: At 74, Professor Wilson's enthusiasm for his ants remains unabated. But these days, it's the life that remains unknown that plays more and more on his mind.

WILSON: It’s not an exaggeration to say we live on a little known planet. And the science of biology in the 21st century will depend on a closer examination of the diversity of life at the species level and an all out effort to complete the mapping of life on Earth.

TOOMEY: That's what Wilson and others are calling for - a concerted effort over the next quarter century to discover and describe the millions of species that remain unknown to formal science. While creatures like birds, mammals, and flowering plants are relatively well known, it’s the smallest life forms – things like nematodes, millipedes, and bacteria – that largely remain a mystery. Wilson calls these unheralded organisms the little creatures that run the world. And he says there's a price to pay if we ignore of them.

WILSON: When biologists go forth into the field, to understand how ecosystems work, to identify new invasive species, to identify the pathogens of new diseases, to look for new pharmaceuticals among plants and even insects, the typical experience is they can’t identify large numbers of these species. They’re not even aware of their existence.

TOOMEY: For instance, before they were discovered in the 1970s, who imagined that microorganisms – known as extremophiles – could survive in the boiling temperatures of ocean thermal vents or in icy polar seas or in acidic hot springs. Research on one such bizzare creature led to the development of a technique called polymerase chain reaction, now a common and indispensable method of duplicating DNA. The enzyme of another is now used to make a protein-degrading additive for detergents. Other extremophiles are being mined for possible sources of new antimicrobial agents. But E.O. Wilson says there's another, more basic reason behind the need for a global survey.

WILSON: Obviously, in the realm of conservation, we can’t save what we don’t know.

TOOMEY: And the key to carrying out this survey is the discipline known as taxonomy. That's the science of discovering, describing and classifying species. But there's a glitch. Taxonomy fell out of favor in the last century, as microbiology took center stage – and most of the research money. Now, there are few scientists who have the ability to discern the often maddeningly subtle, minute details that differentiate one species from another. Dr. Wilson never left the basic work of ant identification. In fact, he's recently published an 800-page opus on just one genus of ant – pheidole – otherwise known as the big-headed ants.

WILSON: Their heads are filled with adductor massive muscles. They're the Schwarzenegger only from the chest up. And those powerful sharp jaws they have allows them to operate like wire clippers when they meet enemies. They just chop off their legs and heads and so on. Along with them you'll see the skinny little minor workers that do all the work.

TOOMEY: And get none of the credit?

WILSON: Well, they get if from me!

E.O. Wilson points to a termite trail on a tree in the Dominican Republic. (Photo: Brian Farrell)

WILSON: It was done for the love of the ant itself, for the love of work itself. Just as a loving exercise in natural history.

TOOMEY: Wilson's love of natural history has its origins in his boyhood. He says he never outgrew his bug stage. But he did have a mentor in his study of ants.

WILSON: When I was 18 years old, I announced while I was an undergraduate at University of Alabama, that my great ambition was to do a complete study of the ants of Alabama. Well, you've got to start somewhere. And this young graduate student, just seven years older than me, was at Harvard. And he heard about me and we started corresponding. And he said, look Wilson, the ants of Alabama isn't going to cut it. What you've got to do is get a broader perspective and start working on the basic biology of a group of ants and look abroad and get moving.

TOOMEY: Dr. Wilson says entomologist Bill Brown took him under his wing, introduced him to researchers at Harvard and, as Wilson puts it, he never looked back. In his latest book, Wilson includes a tribute to his mentor.

WILSON: He welcomed you. He treated you with respect. He stood in awe with you before the intricacy of the subject. He gladly taught and learned. He created a sense that here in this little discipline was something – to borrow from F. Scott Fitzgerald - the kind of writer Bill Brown so admired – something commensurate to man's capacity for wonder. In 1950, he was 28 and I was 21, and the whole world seemed ours to possess.

TOOMEY: Everyone should have such a mentor.

WILSON: I would like to provide that lesson for everyone if I possibly could.

TOOMEY: Taxonomy is going to need many more mentors if the millions of unknown species are ever to be identified. But, right now, many creatures have no experts. For instance, the last camel cricket specialist died in 1989. Want to study the grasshoppers of the Caucasus and need help? Well, you’re about three decades too late. The endangered status of taxonomists has even led to jokes. One goes like this – taxonomists are so rare, maybe they should all be brought in from the wild and enrolled in a captive breeding program.

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CURWOOD: You’re listening to “A Little Known Planet.” Coming up: Diane Toomey takes us to visit a program to encourage students to take up the basic science of classifying forms of life. You’re listening to NPR’s Living on Earth.