Philippe Bouchet, Geoff Boxshall, Gary Poore, Jan Mees, Edward Vanden Berghe, Shahid Naeem, Mark Costello and others used data or statistics from the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) to illustrate their presentations. Mark Costello mentioned WoRMS in his plenary presentation and also gave a radio interview. Costello (for all marine species) and Bouchet (for Mollusca) presented data showing that the number of people describing new species has never been so great; i.e. there has never been so many taxonomists in contrast to common statements that taxonomic expertise is in decline. Costello showed this was also the case for terrestrial species, Bouchet added that collecting specimens was far more efficient now than in the past, such that we were now in the golden age of discovering marine life. Gary Poore reinforced this with an example from the upper continental slope of Western Australia where 95% of 750 small crustacean species remain undescribed. Geoff Boxshall highlighted the paucity of information on marine parasites. In the unicellular gregarines that parasitise invertebrate hosts, wel;l over 50% of the named species were described from European Seas, reflecting an obvious geographical bias in historic sampling effort.
The next WCMB2014 will be in Qingdao, China