Writing and Reading

      Characterizing species diversity is important to many aspects of scientific research and resource management today, including agriculture. But the practice is not a new one. In many traditions, knowing or assigning something’s “true name” held incredible power (think Rumpelstiltskin). That knowledge remains powerful today. Using taxonomy, Messinger will identify the bee species she is cataloging and preserve it in a biological collection. Insect collections have been popular at least as far back as the seventeenth century. This practice helps us to better comprehend and more responsibly protect the world around us.

The writer is considering deleting the underlined sentence. Should the underlined sentence be kept or 
deleted?