Hi Wayne, 

see attached, there you will find the 80 most pressing questions in southern Polar research

Hope this helps a bit!

All the best

Thank you César - a great help.

Best wishes,

Wayne

great! just remembered there is something similar for the conservation of marine biodiversity

Cheers,

These are very general, but I think some big ones that are probably on a number of "top" lists are: (1) What is the underling neural architecture responsible for human consciousness?, (2) Do nonhuman animals have a Theory of Mind?, (3) How did life begin on earth?, (4) and every layperson's favorite, is there life beyond earth?

To throw in something more specific, how did avian migration evolve? 

I would say: "How many species live on Earth?" Not really that the exact number matters but the fact that we still don't have a clue if it is 3, 10, 30 millions or more is quite interesting. Even more interesting is that governments spend billions of dollars to find extra-terrestrial life when 90% (or at best 50%) of the life on Earth is still undescribed and currently under severe threat. 

We still far from understanding dynamics of life and we now just sampling some static time points. I Think the most pressing question is how we can do that and hence may provide solution of many questions mentioned in above posts.

I would add one: why does sexual reproduction exist?

As I understand it, there is still no consensus among biologists/ecologists as to the cause of the latitudinal biodiversity gradient. Why are there so many more species in the tropics? Wikipedia lists many possible explanations and links to peer reviewed publications about the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latitudinal_gradients_in_species_diversity 

Thank you all for your valuable contributions. You have provided some very interesting topics for further discussion.