Insect goo aids biodiversity research Apologies to Jonathan Eisen (see Badomics in the journal), but today in GigaScience we publish a new “squishomics” approach for assessing and understanding biodiversity, using the slightly wacky sounding method of combining DNA-soup made from crushed-up insects and the latest sequencing technology.

Benoît Fontaine et al. recently published a study concluding that average lag time between a species being discovered and subsequently described is 21 years.The paper concludes:This is a conclusion that merits more investigation, especially as the title of the paper suggests there is an appalling lack of efficiency (or resources) in the way we decsribe biodiversity.