Conservation, evolutionary biology and the discovery of future biological resources

One argument for the conservation of biodiversity is that we cannot tell which species will have commodity value in the future. The uncertainty is so great that the term "serendipity value' is applied to non-resource species to indicate that new biological resources will continue to be discovered primarily by chance. Examples are used to show how the biological sciences, especially natural history, ecology, systematics and evolutionary biology, can be developed by a rational approach to the identification of new resources. An unanticipated variety of species, species interactions, behaviours, tissues and natural products emerge with either proven or potential application. -from Author