societies; so many particulars (structures, functions, etc.) in different species whose natural function can be transposed to functions of human interest. Practicing bio-inspiration beyond random discoveries of opportunity requires a broad and reasoned exploration of living things and the relationships between their structures and functions.
Particulars are also often geographical rather than purely taxonomic. Each state, government or municipality needs to be aware of local biodiversity in order to develop a reserve or environmental, agricultural or health policies (Pellens and Grandcolas 2016). These are all reasons to be aware of local fauna and flora with their innumerable numbers of endemic species (Caesar et al. 2017). It is worth remembering the order of magnitude of these numbers and that there are, for example, 40,000 species of insects in metropolitan France alone (Gargominy et al. 2014).
Even if we focus on a few species for reasons of immediate interest, it is essential to know their close relatives. Knowing the meaning, adaptive character and selection regime of the traits of organisms, whether they are genotypic or phenotypic models, requires an understanding of their history (Jenner 2006). Is it necessary, once again, to quote Dobzhansky (1973) – “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” – to be convinced of this. Reconstructing the origin and evolution of the traits of an organism of interest requires knowing not only its close relatives, but also a very large part of the living world. How many fundamental traits has the human species inherited, the understanding of which is based on their structure and function at the Metazoan scale (more than a million species!)? This presupposes an adequate taxonomic sampling of life, which is not necessarily limited to known species, but which must be searched for out in the field in order to find unknown species whose lifestyles have sometimes been long surmised.
The entirety of this book is therefore dedicated to these approaches to exploring the diversity of life, each of them showing the crucial need we have for exploratory approaches. “Exploratory”, which is easy to understand when reading this volume, does not refer to a kilometric description of specific characteristics, but to an organization of knowledge and hypothesis tests, based on a large sampling of living species – a large part of which is, strangely, still unknown to us, even though we come into contact with it every day. Without further delay, we must not suffer from or destroy biodiversity, but study it in order to integrate it sustainably into our societies.
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