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"Die ... Überlegungen sollen sich ausschließlich mit der Möglichkeit einer Verkürzung der Lebensarbeitszeit beschäftigen. Dabei wird es sich freilich als zweckmäßig erweisen, nicht nur an eine Verkürzung zu der Lebensarbeitszeit im engeren Sinn zu denken, also an eine Vorverlagerung des Zeitpunktes des Ausscheidens aus der Erwerbstätigkeit, sondern auch an Formen der Unterbrechung der Erwerbstätigkeit im Lebenslauf." (Autorenreferat)

Sir— Switzerland covers 0.03% of the world's land surface, and lacks marine or tropical ecosystems. Yet we have found an estimated 345,000 type specimens (used for taxonomic naming of species) in Swiss museums and other collections. According to some estimates, there are about 1.5 million known species in the world. If correct, this means that Switzerland contains type specimens of up to a quarter of all the world's known species. This exceptional number is surprising, as Switzerland has never been a colonial power, nor does it contain many large natural-history collections like those kept in prestigious institutions elsewhere. The work was done by taxonomists who built up enormous global collections — for example, Augustin-Pyramus de Candolle and his son Alphonse in the nineteenth century, and Auguste Forel, who died in 1931 — and by others who focused on the biological survey of particular areas, such as New Caledonia or Paraguay. Establishing the exact number of types in Swiss collections is part of an initiative by the Swiss Biodiversity Collections Online Consortium (www.biodiversity.ch/sbc-online.ch) — a consortium of Swiss systematists, curators of biological collections, the Systematics Task Force and the Swiss Biodiversity Forum. The consortium is lobbying the Swiss federal government to invest in this unique resource so it can be made available to the scientific community, with access to visual sources and databases, through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and other Internet applications. The type collections are invaluable tools for use in international efforts to document our planet's biodiversity. Not only should they stimulate taxonomists to work on them, but they should surely be important enough for Switzerland to become a full member of GBIF so it can share its wealth with other scientists and conservationists. This activity may revitalize Swiss national systematics research, which has suffered several recent setbacks. Currently, there are no professors of systematic zoology ...