Svenska artprojektets vetenskapliga del – de första tio åren (2002−2011)

The goal of the Swedish Taxonomy Initiative (STI) is to find and describe all multicellular species in Sweden. The taxonomic knowledge about which species are present, how they can be identified and what they should be called, is a necessary prerequisite, i.e., an infrastructure for research about the species, the ecosystems they are part of, what factors that influence them, and the services they provide mankind. To get this research infrastructure, we need not only publications and complete databases, but also skilled taxonomists, other species experts and museums curating the indispensable reference collections. This report gives an overview of the activities of the STI during its first ten years and the results achieved. Eighty taxonomic research or inventory projects have been supported. These included 17 Ph.D. students, 12 post-doctoral positions and 6 assistant professors. Sweden now has taxonomic expertise in a number of groups where this has been lacking before. Groups of organisms comprising about 11 600 species have been scientifically studied and many formerly poorly known groups are now described in 265 scientific publications. These publications have cost far less than the mean for publications supported by Swedish research councils. In addition, about 46 popular science publications have been published. So far, about 2 430 species new to the country have been found. Of these about 860 were entirely new to science. A normative taxonomic database called Dyntaxa has been developed which now includes about 95% of Sweden’s known species. Two large-scale inventories have been performed: an inventory of the marine bottom fauna along the West Coast of Sweden, and an insect inventory named the Swedish Malaise Trap Project. The latter has collected some 80 million specimens. Fifty per cent of the insect material has been sorted to groups appropriate for further taxonomic treatment. The STI has also granted support to the biological collections of Sweden’s major natural history museums, thereby making it possible for them to fully contribute to STI by curating their collections, strengthening their taxonomic competence and speeding up the process of digitizing their collections. An independent evaluation of the results from STI’s scientific part was carried out during spring 2012. The project got very positive statements, e.g.: The scientific output is huge, and most of the funded projects have delivered ’value for money’ in this respect. STI has placed Sweden in the absolute elite with regard to knowledge of national biota.