Biomolecule: Maxim Vinarski on his way to science, systematics and implementation of high-tech methods for biodiversity assessment
Maxim Vinarski is a biologist, Doctor of Biology, Head of the Laboratory of Macro-Ecology and Biogeography of Invertebrates at St Petersburg University. His scope of academic interests includes the study of molluscs and biological systematics, primarily of invertebrates.
Hello, Maxim. And the first question is: why biology? How did you get interested in it?
It was written in the stars (laughs) − that is how I usually answer such questions. I have been fascinated by biology for as long as I can remember and I have never reflected why it was so.
Well, perhaps you learned something like that in school and thought: ’Oh, great!’. Once I found an encyclopaedia in a ditch. It was also on biology, by the way. It was devoted to plants. I got very enthusiastic about that for the next 10 years. Can you also remember such a striking moment?
It all started with an encyclopaedia, indeed: at first it was the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia, 2nd edition. The one that had been published in the Stalin—Khrushchev era. It contained much information and pictures. All of that could really spark my interest, but now it is hard to be sure about it retrospectively.
What was your grade in biology at school?
I have always got an "A" because I have always been interested in the subject and never had problems with it.
Did your teacher single you out in any way?
Yes, I was lucky with my teacher. I had a very good teacher of biology. She was a graduate of the then Leningrad State University, and she always supported me. She really singled me out. To tell the truth, she wanted me to become a geneticist or someone like that − a high-minded specialist. But we have what we have now. The truth was she was really kind to me. Well, fortunately, at school, I actually did not deal with any centres for young naturalists and all that. I contacted them later on and realised that most likely my interest in biology would have been ruined there by classes devoted to planting and rabbits. I therefore did all of it myself and got to it on my own.
Why did you go into systematics?
I always liked the very idea of classifying organisms, the opportunity to mentally compartmentalise all the biodiversity that we have on this planet. To give each creature a name. Apparently, this is due to the mindset, because systematics is, to a large extent, not only a scientific occupation, but also a vocation. Some kind of mental ability for a rational view of the world where everything is clear, unambiguous and everything has its own name − that is our picture perfect. And it has not yet been accomplished, by the way, although we have been moving this way for more than 2000 years. In fact, systematics is, to my mind, sort of an esoteric science, for, in order to practice it, you must have a particular leaning towards it.
What is the place of systematics in relation to other life sciences?
At present, systematics is still part of a more general scientific programme conventionally referred to as the ’biodiversity description’. It also includes a part of evolution, ecology, and biogeography. On the one hand, this is certainly one of the most fundamental biological sciences, because any biological research always begins with the identification of an organism. Even if it is the renowned Drosophila fly, Drosophila melanogaster, even if it is a white mouse, even if it is some kind of a roundworm, Caenorhabditis elegans. All these organisms have a scientific name in Latin, they all occupy a particular place in the general taxonomic worldview, and scientists therefore always begin with defining what kind of organism it is, what species it belongs to.
On the other hand, now systematics is, for some reason, often perceived as an archaic, outdated science. As a science that is deep in the shadow of molecular genetics and biotechnology. And for many biologists, especially for beginners, systematics is generally perceived as some kind of an anachronism, because, in some of its features, it has not changed over the past few centuries. Unfortunately, modern sources on systematics are therefore full of complaints that systematics is underestimated and receives much less funding than other branches of biology. Moreover, it is a global trend, not only Russian.
On the one hand, systematics is therefore a backbone, and on the other hand, as one author called it, it is the "Cinderella of biology", because it is underestimated and not loved, which causes kind of an inferiority complex in some systematists.
It is also very important that until now systematics is probably the only biological science with non-professional scientists and amateurs playing a huge part in it. These are people who may not even have a biological education. They can work as doctors or engineers.
There was a Swiss systematist of insects, a world-famous expert. He was a rural postman and in his spare time he was engaged in the classification of water bugs, if I am not mistaken. The academic community often looks at that somewhat condescendingly: that taxonomy or systematics are still a place where you can be a non-professional and do something, roughly speaking, while sitting in your dining-room. The specificity of systematics is very often perceived as a sign of backwardness or archaism. You see that everything is quite complicated in our business.
Does this attitude towards it exist in the biological community?
Yes, it does. A very peculiar metamorphosis has taken place in the history of systematics. The current systematics, both botanical and zoological, originated in the mid-18th century with the great Carl Linnaeus. Of course, there were systematists prior to Linnaeus, but it was he who laid the foundation of scientific classification we still use. In the mid-18th century, Linnaeus was one of the greatest and most renowned scientists in Europe, his fame being comparable to that of Hawking now. Why? Because in those years the attitude towards systematics was much better. Linnaeus was admitted to the Swedish royal family and he was known throughout Europe. 100 years later, when experimental areas of biology appeared, such as physiology, developmental biology, and genetics a little later, systematics began to look like the "Cinderella" I mentioned earlier, still living by some primitive methods and never using any experimental approaches. An outflow of bright minds, personnel, money and jobs from the field of systematics to these new, advanced disciplines started in the era of Charles Darwin.
Thus, the early 20th century saw systematics completely losing its prestige among biologists. They started to ignore it, considering it an occupation for obsolete museum-based entomologists. If you remember Dick Sand, A Captain at Fifteen, a novel by Jules Verne, there is a wonderful character in it, cousin Bénédict. He is an absolutely positive person, sort of an eccentric kind uncle. Well, this is a caricature of systematics. Cousin Bénédict saw nothing but his insects, and in his work Jules Verne reflected the popular culture’s idea of what systematics was. To a large extent, this image survived well into the 20th century. And only at the turn of the 21st century the situation began to change greatly.
What happened?
About 100 years ago, a discussion was initiated about what to do next. The solution was as follows: the fact is that both Linnaeus and his numerous followers classified organisms intuitively, I would say. That is, Linnaeus, if you open his work, does not write anywhere why he considers this or that species separate ones. Why? Because the whole classification procedure has traditionally been based on this personal knowledge, when scientists, working a lot with their objects, begin to understand without realising it how they can be compartmentalised. Yet, in doing this, they very often cannot even explain to themselves why they do it this way. Linnaeus has a famous aphorism: it is the genus that gives the characters, and not the characters that make the genus. What does it mean? It means that first systematics sorts out plants into genera and only then begins to look for how to distinguish them from one another.
In the era of Linnaeus, in the mid-18th century, everything was fine, but in the late 19th — early 20th century it was considered completely obsolete. Atomic physics and chemistry emerge, as well as all these experimental areas of biology. Ernest Rutherford once said matter-of-factly that all knowledge is divided into physics and collecting stamps. In the early 20th century, systematists in Russia and in other countries began to think about what to do with that, and a very simple solution was found: let us be like physicists and apply the most accurate methods of cognition possible, widely using mathematics and experimental approaches. In the early 20th century, scientists were only growing aware of this trend, but during the entire further development of systematics it only intensified.
In the late 20th century, we came to what is called a molecular evolution in systematics. The following happened: due to the discovery of molecular genetics, scientists got the opportunity to use not only the morphological characters for classification but also, first of all, the genetic ones. It therefore became possible to decipher the primary nucleotide sequence of DNA and compare gene sequences in different organisms. Using statistical methods, scientists could now objectively quantify the degree of similarity and difference between species. Thus, any intuitiveness was banished and a "physicalist" ideal of knowledge based on accuracy, on repeatability, on verifiability was achieved.
But can we say that systematics is an exact science?
It does want to be exact, but, honestly, that very intuition, damned by all, still plays a significant role. That is, systematics is one of the few biological sciences where the following question is discussed: ’What is it, an art or an exact science?’ And, apparently (this is my subjective opinion), it will never become absolutely exact anyway. I’ll explain why. The most obvious example is fossils. Biological systematics deals not only with living organisms, it also includes all extinct ones. So we have a big problem with the extinct ones, because, in the vast majority of cases, genetic information is not available. And this is not so bad, only what is preserved in the fossil record is available, that is, hard tissues: bones, teeth, shells, sometimes ichnites. And everything else just fades away. A palaeontologist-systematist will therefore still be guided by some interpretations that are more or less reliable. This is the layer of systematics that lacks accuracy, unfortunately. We would all like it to be exact but it has not yet been achieved, and, apparently, it will never become possible.
Now there is a lot of talk about the era of the sixth mass extinction. Will systematics be able to become some kind of a superhero who will save everyone, or which role will it play?
Let us talk about extinction first. In total, palaeontologists have registered five mass extinction events in the history of the Earth, of which the most powerful was between the Permian and Triassic periods. According to various estimates, 90% of species died out then. But when we discuss all these stunning figures, we must understand that it had been taking place for several million years. That is, there was no Apocalypse then as it is often portrayed in popular science literature. Species died out gradually, and this sixth extinction, so much talked about, differs in one thing − the pace. What we observed in the past for millions of years, is happening now in hundreds of years. The intensity of extinction − although, of course, there is no talk of 90% extinction so far, fortunately − is enormously higher than in the geological past. Naturally, in order to stop it, we must understand who, where and how we should save, tentatively speaking. And we cannot do that without primary information. Systematics therefore plays a fundamental role here. In this case, it deals with the description of biological diversity.
If you do not meet these conditions, i.e. do not describe, name, and classify, it will not be clear who must protect, what must be protected and where. If you open any Red Data Book, all animal essays begin with a taxonomic position. To substantiate my statement, there is a wonderful story about giraffes. Everyone was taught that the giraffe is only one species living in Africa. Then it turned out that one species is in fact four species of giraffe, which do not even crossbreed with one another. When geneticists discovered this, at first there was a scandal, because traditional systematists rebelled. But then morphological and other characters were found, and this is important, since giraffes are very different, and accordingly, for the purposes of preserving the biodiversity of large ungulates of Africa, we cannot do without systematics.
But giraffes, rhinos and gorillas are one thing. These are animals that we call charismatic species. They are well-known to everyone, everyone is aware that they are endangered and therefore need to be protected. Huge amounts of money are invested in them. But at the same time, it is forgotten that 95% of animals are invertebrates that no one sees or hears.
There is a very serious concern that most of the species that are now becoming extinct have not been described by specialists at all. This is called "silent extinction". When we consider the intensity of extinction today and compare it with other extinctions in the past, we forget that a significant part of the species remains undescribed at all. But why is it so? To a large extent it is caused by the fact that people are traditionally drawn to objects that are more attractive or important to them. Let us take, for example, parasites. The parasites of humans, domestic animals and cultivated plants are very well described, yet the parasites of wild animals are practically unknown. That is simply because there is no one to study them. There is lack of specialists who will spend their lives describing, for example, nematodes that parasitise in some tropical frogs. We can therefore say that the rate of the sixth extinction is even underestimated, simply because we do not take into account the huge number of undescribed species.
Can we say then that we are aware of how many species of living organisms there really are on Earth?
For that, there are statistical methods and extrapolation methods, when, using data on the gradual description of species in a particular group, you can make a forecast about how much is left to be discovered. Naturally, this is also an estimate, and it has a probability, but, like any practical scientific forecast, it has more or less reliable scenarios. Systematics provides knowledge that is in the nature of constant refinement. There are things that, I think, will never change: like a human is a member of the order of primates, and primates are a part of mammals. Such cases are numerous. Another thing is that there are groups of animals that we still do not know much about, and there is a lot of controversy around them. Yet this is normal, because new technologies are emerging.
As to our time, what significant events have taken place in your field over the past 10 years?
Perhaps the most important event was just the widespread introduction of advanced technologies to solve traditional taxonomic problems. These are molecular methods, methods of computer-assisted analysis of images, and prospects for the use of artificial intelligence. I have recently received a letter from my colleague in Germany. He is overjoyed and hopes that as soon as artificial intelligence methods are developed, everything will fall into place and the problem of fauna description will be solved. To be honest, I am sceptical about it, because I know the history of systematics. Any scientific method is merely a tool. Its results are interpreted by people. Even if we use the most advanced methods of artificial intelligence, there will still be some part left for the human mind’s work, although the trend, of course, is that the more we develop, the more and more control is given to computers.
And yet the value of systematics lies in the fact that there is no despotic control body in it that would oblige everyone to act in a strictly defined manner. That is, if you have access to a new generation sequencer and can read and compare entire genomes, then, from the point of view of systematics, your contribution is no worse than that of a mere amateur who classifies insects according to morphological features in their dining-room. In our science, a very traditional method and a very high-tech one still coexist. And that is probably fine. As Mao Zedong said, ’Let a hundred flowers bloom!’
What do you think about leaving systematics to the mercy of artificial intelligence?
On the one hand, I realise that objectively it is a trend we cannot escape. And besides, this method, if properly developed, will give us some new information that we will have to use in some way. You see that I am not an opponent of this method. The thing that worries me is what I would call dehumanisation of systematics. When traditional knowledge about animals is replaced either by a computer programme or by purely genetic exercises. This leads to the fact that people lose direct knowledge about animals. It is reduced to DNA sequences or some kind of mathematical models. From the philosophical perspective, it seems not entirely correct to me. That is, we are losing the unity of worldview. We are losing the idea of an animal as such by limiting it to a set of diagnostic or pseudo-diagnostic features. From a humanistic standpoint, I do not like this trend either, although I absolutely recognise its necessity and even fully understand why this is happening. This is again part of the struggle of systematics for a place under the sun, another stage in its transformation into a real exact science.
The only trouble is that this trend can lead to the murder of systematics as such. To prevent that, it must become an integral part of the science of biodiversity in the broadest sense. In this case, it probably has a chance to survive.
Are there today any pending issues that concern you personally?
All the activity of a systematist is limited to finding an answer to one big question: how many species are there on Earth, how to classify them and what to call them? Each of us works with a very small piece of this puzzle. Imagine a huge mosaic made of individual stones, and every systematist probably strives to reach the maximum perfection in their field.
However, we are well aware that in 50 or just in 25 years the methodology will change, views will change, and our system will become obsolete. A systematist is a person who, on the one hand, works for the future, but on the other hand, understands that their contribution will not turn over the biological worldview. That resembles building a Gothic cathedral in medieval Europe: it could take 100, 150, and even 200 years to build it. A systematist is a bricklayer who works on the foundation of such cathedral, understands that never in their life they will see what kind of cathedral it will be and how it will look like. But they still contribute to general human knowledge.
In our science, a published work will never become obsolete. If you did a really good job, it will last as long as humanity exists, or at least the task of classification. The word you have said will not disappear, will not be forgotten. Even if your opinion was wrong, they will still return to it and discuss it.
In addition, if you have described a new species, you save it forever as its author. This is sort of a problem − a slightly ambitious striving for immortality. That is, to discover a new species, give it a name and see your name in the list of taxa. On the one hand, this is an incentive, and on the other hand, unfortunately, it leads to the fact that systematists often describe species without thinking first, without collecting the necessary evidence. This is human weakness − and, of course, it may be blamed, but, probably, it is forgivable. Although, of course, in some cases this creates serious difficulties.
Do you have your favourite "piece of the puzzle"?
Starting from my diploma thesis, I still mainly deal with one family of freshwater molluscs, the so-called pond snails, which everyone studies at school. I still cannot get done with them. I started with a description of the fauna of one big city, and now we are working on a global scale, but there is no end in sight.
In addition, these snails of mine have now become part of a larger project supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation. It is dedicated to the origin and evolution of the freshwater biota of the Arctic. The study of pond snails enables us to understand the processes that took place in the past, for example, the migration of freshwater animals across the land bridge that existed in the Pleistocene at the site of the current Bering Strait. This is just the case when the results of the systematist’s work begin to "work" in a different context, helping science to solve the problems of evolution, biogeography, and palaeoecology.
But why the pond snails?
They were my diploma thesis subject, assigned to me when I was an undergraduate, and then, when I started to dig deeper, it became clear to me that there still was so much to be done. And the more you dig into it, the more questions arise.
Can it be that one day we would describe all species and systematics would "end" as a science?
Theoretically speaking, there is such a probability. But if we rely on current biodiversity assessments, I cannot say when that will happen. In addition, we have already discussed that each new generation acquires new scientific tools, and all this work mainly starts anew. I therefore think that as long as humanity exists, systematics will not end, to one degree or another. It may end up as a field of biology, like pinning butterflies, but as a scientific task, I think it will not disappear.
It is absolutely no coincidence that Charles Darwin called his work On the Origin of Species instead of Evolution. A species is a fundamental unit which everyone works with, and only systematists know what a species is and how to distinguish and name these species. In this general philosophical sense, I therefore think that systematics has no end, just as astronomy, nuclear physics, and other sciences.
How will your science develop in future? And what difficult challenges will it face?
The main challenges are connected with the self-identification of systematics as a science. It is constantly forced to prove its right to exist. A practicing systematist always feels treated like a person engaged in some secondary activity. Now there is a very weak reproduction of young scientists: very few people can and want to devote their lives to this, not very rewarding, activity. Only a person, for whom systematics is indeed a vocation and only then a means to pursue some kind of an academic career, can treat systematics with gratitude. Systematics, like elevated poetry, will therefore always be a domain for the few.
The pessimistic scenario is like that: systematics does not exist as a separate biological discipline, and it becomes just a kind of philately, while classification is completely at the mercy of artificial intelligence. The optimistic one lies in the fact that systematics is preserved: it lives, is updated and improved, and retains its well-deserved place among other scientific disciplines.
I do not want to speak of technology here, because even 20 or 30 years ago it was absolutely impossible to predict how we would live now. Here is a small example for you: 30 years ago, you could practice systematics only in five or six cities on the globe, where there were good libraries. Now, 90% of what we need, we get from the comfort of our homes, thanks to online libraries. This is an incredible turning point in the fate of systematics. Information has ceased to be the elite’s domain. I think that in 50 years systematics will wholly be cybernetic. It will go online in the form of databases, with data added in a real-time environment. It will take any person just one keystroke to retrieve any taxonomic information. And, of course, I think that the methods of defining objects, if not classifying them, with the help of AI will be well-developed. In general, systematics will make the most of the achievements of scientific progress, but I do not undertake to predict what achievements it will be. Futurology is known as a science famous for the maximum number of failed predictions.
Do you have a big dream?
You see, when we speak about going into science, big dreams are usually very, very vague. But when a person starts doing research, they realise in the process that a lot needs to be done. Their consciousness changes and they begin to set some new tasks for themselves.
I never had a big dream such as saving humanity from whatever it might be. I just always liked systematics and wanted to deal with it professionally, dedicate my life to it. In general, I succeeded, although, of course, not immediately, not easily − but the path is never strewn with roses. Perhaps my big dream was just to take part in this huge work of describing biodiversity, making my modest contribution, and to feel that I was needed and wanted there. And indeed, when the Union for Conservation of Nature or some reserve turn to me for advice, I realise that someone probably needs me and that my activities with snails are not for my own pleasure only. It is also a socially useful activity that cannot be done by anyone else. Scientists are the same kind of human beings as the others. We also need compliments and recognition of our merits. And this is not only how many times you were quoted, but also whether you feel that you are in demand as a specialist, as an expert. You may have expertise in a very small, very narrow area, but still it is very important and honourable.