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A parasitological perspective in biodiversity survey and inventory provides powerful insights into the history, structure, and maintenance of the biosphere. Parasitology contributes a powerful conceptual paradigm or landscape that links ecology, systematics, evolution, biogeography, behavior, and an array of biological phenomena from the molecular to the organismal level across the continuum of microparasites to macroparasites and their vertebrate and invertebrate hosts. Effective survey and inventory can be strategically focused or can take a synoptic approach, such as that represented by the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory. We argue that parasitology should be an integral component of any programs for biodiversity assessment on local, regional, or global scales. Taxonomists, who constitute the global taxasphere, hold the key to the development of effective surveys and inventories and eventual linkage to significant environmental and socioeconomic issues. The taxasphere is like a triage team. The" battlefield" is the biosphere, and the" war" is human activities that degrade the biosphere. Sadly, at the point in time that we reali/, e we have documented only a tiny portion of the world's diversity, and want to document more, we find that one of the most rare and declining groups of biologists is the taxasphere. This taxonomic impediment, or critical lack of global taxonomic expertise recognized by Systematics Agenda 2000 and DIVERSITAS, prevents initiation and completion of biodiversity research programs at a critical juncture, where substantial components of global diversity are threatened. The Convention for Biological Diversity mandates that …