Andrew Moss and colleagues lament that raising the public's awareness of biodiversity will not necessarily change behaviour (Nature 508, 186; 2014). A fresh perspective might: the public needs to recognize that biodiversity is crucial to a variety of core industries and not just the province of conservationists.

Biodiversity is not only about vertebrates and flowering plants, as is popularly believed: invertebrates and microbes account for at least 90% of all species. The genetic, metabolic, physiological and chemical diversity of these species underpins primary industries such as agriculture, grazing, forestry and fisheries.

Many biodiversity elements help to provide crops, timber, seafood and other necessities through ecosystem services. For example, microbes naturally regulate nitrogen and phosphorus in agricultural soils, and wild pollinators increase crop yields. It is therefore ironic that these primary industries so often constitute a threat to biodiversity conservation efforts.

Promoting a popular vision of biodiversity that embraces all kinds of species could lead to conservation being taken more seriously by the public, and by those economic sectors that act as though biodiversity is not important to them.