A study carried out by scientists from the Census of Marine Life and published in the journalPLoS Biologystates that86 percent of all species on earth and 91 percent of marine species have yet to be discovered, described, and cataloged. According to the new calculations, there are an estimated 6.5 million species living on land, while 2.2 million inhabit the depths of the ocean. That isthe planet’s biodiversity is estimated at 8.7 million species. Until now, the data being considered placed the number of species between 3 and 100 million.
According to author Camilo Mora, from the University of Hawaii (United States), “the question of how many species exist has intrigued scientists for centuries and the answer, along with research on the distribution and abundance of species, is particularly important. right now, sincehuman activity is accelerating the rate of extinctions“According to the researcher,” many species can disappear before anything is known about their existence, about their unique niche and about their function in ecosystems. “
For the co-author of the study, Boris Worm, from the University of Dalhouise (Canada), “this work deduces the most basic number necessary to describe the living biosphere.” In his view, “if the number of people in a nation were not known, by no order of magnitude, future planning could not be carried out. The same is true of biodiversity. Humanity has committed to saving endangered species But so far we’ve had very little real idea of how many species there are. “
Dr. Worm points out that the Red List published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature evaluated 59,508 species, of which 19,625 are classified as threatened. This means thatThe IUCN Red List, the most sophisticated ongoing study of its kind, tracks less than 1 percent of the world’s species.
For the new study, numerical patterns have been identified in the taxonomic classification system. When applied to the five known eukaryotic kingdoms, the researchers’ approach predicted the following figures: 7.77 million animal species (of which 953,434 have been described and cataloged), 298,000 plant species (of which 215,644 are have described and cataloged), 611,000 species of fungi (of which 43,271 have been described and cataloged), 36,400 species of protozoa (unicellular organisms, of which 8,118 have been described and cataloged) and 27,500 chromist species (including, for example, brown algae, diatoms and water molds, of which 13,033 have been described and cataloged).
“The immense effort to include all known species in taxonomic databases, such as the Catalog of Life and the World Register of Marine Species, makes this analysis practically possible,” says co-author Derek Tittensor, noting that “a As these databases grow and improve, the method can be refined and updated to provide a more accurate estimate. “
