Every Species on Earth 308
nickynicky9doors writes: "National Geographic News relates that scientists to date have identified less than 2 million distinct species with from 10 million to more than 100 million still undiscovered. Likening this dearth of information to doing chemistry knowing only one third of the periodic table, biologist Terry Gosliner is involved in the All Species Foundation. The foundation is attempting to discover, identify and classify every living species and place the catalogue online over the next 25 years. It is hoped new technology and new recruits to the field of taxonomy will make the timetable viable."
Re:Humans and counting (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course you are right in implying that the parent post has little if any merit as a valid relation.
Species (Score:3, Interesting)
If you were to see, for the first time, a chihuahua and a St. Bernard next to each other, you might be tempted to label them as separate species at first, when in reality they're just different breeds of the same species. It would take a lot of study to determine how closely they were actually related.
If you draw the lines differently, you could probably get some extremely wild variations in the count for the number of species on Earth.
Impossible Target (Score:5, Interesting)
Secondly, take places like Lake Vostok [bbc.co.uk]. Possibly there is life in here, and if there is there is possibly life elsewhere entombed under a million years of ice.
Added to this is there is a certain vagueness as to what a species actually is. I can't remember the details, but there is a species of bird (a gull I think) that is present round to world. As you go from east to west the individuals change slightly, but can still interbreed (which is, more or less, the definition of what a species is). Whoever, once you go round the world you get back to where you started, the individuals either side of the start line can no longer interbreed with those on the other side of the line. (I'd draw an ascii diagram but I can't really be bothered fighting the lameness filter). Are all these individuals one species or not? (A good analogy is a line of individuals - each one is within an inch in height of both neighbours (== can interbreed). When you form the line into a circle the two former end members are two feet apart in height (== can't interbreed)).
Then you have just the sheer practical difficulty of getting to places where there might be life - Challenger Deep? The seabed under Challenger deep? Oil bearing shale 3 miles down? We know (from our sole visit to Challenger Deep) that there is some sort of life down there, but have no clue as to what species.
A worthwhile undertaking, but doomed from the start - we can't, currently, get definite about giant squid, nevermind microscopic sea creatures.
Genetic Blueprints (Score:4, Interesting)
Some info from Blue Planet(the Discovery special) (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Imagine . . . (Score:2, Interesting)
The trick is that you wouldn't have to worry about sea creatures or most insects, which could probably survive on their own, and there are really very few very large animals that would require lots of room.
Regardless of whether or not one is of a religious persuasion or believes in the Ark story, it was an interesting read. *shrug*
Insect evolution rates are problematic (Score:5, Interesting)
In order to understand why these estimates are so large, you have to realize the incredible biodiversity of the plan and insect kingdoms. Plants make up to 22 percent [nytimes.com] of the total number of species, and insects pretty much account for the rest [nytimes.com]. Mammals take up considerably less than 1% of that total.
Many of these species have such high evolutionary rates that they can evolve very quickly and often fill extremely specialized roles in a niche environment. Given this high rate of evolution, the mind-bogelling estimates of the total number, and the intrusionary nature of detection techniques, isn't this goal a little too unrealistic? It would seem to me that by the time you finally have catalogued them 'all,' a good percentage will have become extinct and whole bunch of new players will have emerged. In addition, verifying the continued existance of these species whould be an enourmous job.
IAAT. Pipe dream: Fund the Grass roots (Score:5, Interesting)
In insect taxonomy if you are a highly trained (world class) you can describe around 50 species PER YEAR (at least doing an adequate job). The (small) family I work in has over 2000 undescribed species. There are fewer than 8 experts in the world on this group, only 2-4 are actually producing names actively, and these at rate of much fewer than 50/year. This is a relatively small family of Insects, there are many many larger ones with many many more undescribed species. You do the math.
The biggest problems is finding funding to do this work. Though taxonomists are invaluable to almost all biological studies (if you can't name your study organisms correctly you can't repeat the science) they are among the least well funded. Those that are funded are primarily big mega projects (like this one) that don't understand the nuts and bolt (i.e. code for computer buffs)...they are the administrators that the BOFH hates. So grandiose plans are contrived with know research into how one actually goes about training or naming the species involved. I've seen this happen several times (in insects there are thousands of trapped insects waiting to be sorted and dished out to experts but there is no funding to train taxonomist to be able to do identifications at even rough levels (family/genus) that would allow managable units of specimens to be passed along to "alpha" taxonomists (those that name species.
As for the molecular folks who say taxonomy is passay.. this is a joke. Before they (moleculoids) can even begin to sequence they have to have some level of taxonomic background in place in order to even select the individuals they will sequence.
If you know anything about taxonomy you know that a major problem is dealing with the nomenclature (how are species given names). You basically have to reference everything that is done in the past to ensure that your not naming a species that is already named. Just figuring out what has been done in the past is very problematic. There is very little funding available to deal with these problems. There is also very little infrastrcutre available to deal with these (there are more and more databases avaialable...and this is good).
THERE IS NO GLOBAL CLEARING HOUSE FOR SPECIES NAMES. Nobody has the time or resources to even complile a complete list of species that have already been named, let alone those to be named!!!
The long and short of this rant...you $$$ folks give money to those doing the grunt work...the actuall taxonomists, not the databases/web sites etc. Give it to the amature collector who knows what they are doing.
Re:They should start with species-at-risk (Score:4, Interesting)
See... the problem is you are looking for things you know to exist, but you can't really identify them by sight. You have to analyze the specimine to determine if it has been classified already. Also, I have to believe that the VAST majority of those 100 Million species are very small... tiny insects through microscopic marine life and bacteria.
I guess if we don't know a species even exists, we can't really determine if it's "at risk" yet. Granted, I think you are correct in saying we should start in the more fragile ecosystems.
Bottom line, it is a daunting task!
Jason
What constitutes a new species? (Score:1, Interesting)
One current method of species discrimination is the comparison of the 16s rRNA ribosomal unit, which is used in the translation of genes. This sequence is highly conserved across many species, and is used as a basis for phylogenic analysis. However, this is not a basis for showing if two organisms are the same species, merely a start to show how different they may be.
If you don't choose different species by DNA content, that only leaves thing such as color, number of appendages, and other physical attributes, as well as perhaps behavior. On this basis, how many species can you break up humans into?
"Every Species on Earth", except the prokaryotes (Score:2, Interesting)
I suppose this is only normal, as there are hundreds of species of bacteria in our gut alone, to say nothing of what's on and inside any other creature. And even though we're discovering microbes in places we never thought they'd be (deep in the earth at giga-Pascal pressures, deep in ice, at sulfur vents in the ocean, etc), we can only culture on a plate or in growth media less than 0.5% of what we see!
So "Every Species"? Hardly. Just the cute and cuddly ones that look good on the cover of National Geographic. And maybe a few slimy ones to gross out the kids.
Niles
Ligers (Score:2, Interesting)
Not really. Ever hear of a liger [sierrasafarizoo.com]?
It's a cross between a lion and a tiger. Two distinctly unique species can interbreed.
Horse + burro = jackass.
Severum (Heros Severus) + Red Devil (Amphilophus Labiatum) = Blood Parrot Fish.
There are several other examples of different species interbreeding.
Most commonly this happens with humans.
Caucasians, Mongoloids and Negroids [dundee.ac.uk] interbreed more prolifically than any other group of species.
I know it isn't politically correct to say such things, but that's one of the main reasons I love science. It has no room nor desire for political correctness.
And before you oversensitive liberals MOD me into oblivion, know this: I'M BLACK
Knunov
Re:Taxonomy isn't really very useful. (Score:3, Interesting)
If taxonomy was just a classification scheme, like the Dewy Decimal System, you'd have a point. But good taxonomy is more than that -- it is a method for uncovering the evolutionary relationships between organisms and that is quite useful -- among other things, it allows virologists to know what virus strains would make good vaccines. And molecular biology has been a part of taxonomy ever since 1965 when Zuckerkandl and Pauling (yes, the two-time Nobelist Pauling) published the landmark paper "Molecules as Documents of Evolutionary History". Taxonomy of microbes and viruses is almost entirely molecular based today.
Re:Humans and counting (Score:4, Interesting)
What is in dispute is the value humans give to diversity.
-There is economic value to diversity in the form useful genes and groups of genes. Also, zoos and nature documentaries are fairly lucrative.
-There is ethical value to diversity. While you may not care much about the wonderful variety of organisms, there are a great many people who do. And that matters.
As for the value of searching out new species --- you can never predict the value of a scientific endeavour. In this case however, you can make an educated guess that discovering new species will provide new insight into evolutionary, ecological, anatomical, physiological, genetic, biochemical, and behavioural processes. That in itself is quite a return on the investment! Imagine what the world would be like if no one had gone out looking for archaebacteria. We wouldn't know about taq polymerase, an enzyme isolated from the archaebacterium Thermophilus aquaticus -- the world wouldn't have the polymerase chain reaction as we know it, and that means genetic research would be hampered to some degree. You just NEVER know what you're gonna find if you go looking. You're bound to be surprised.
Someone already mentioned the dodo... I would add to that by mentioning the Calvaria major tree. Without the dodo to ingest its seeds and prepare them for germination, the tree is doomed in its natural habitat. No C. major trees have sprouted since the dodo went the way of the dodo. I believe there currently is a group that's trying to preserve the species by using turkeys instead to digest the seed coat. Now consider all those other species suffering a similar fate because their ecologies aren't well understood.
Re:10 to 100 million what?? (Score:2, Interesting)
The technique they use to estimate this is called a species-area curve [utk.edu]. As others have explained, you intensely survey a very small piece of land, and can statistically correlate that to how many species you'll find in a larger area.
Some regions, like the tropical rainforest, are very high in species. You might have a certain type of plant that has five insect species that can only survive on that plant, and those insects might have little parasite wasps in them that specialize only in that insect, etc.
That's why instinctions rates of species can be confusing. A few types of ecosystems are biodiversity hotspots [infomanage.com]. You might find ten thousand distinct speies in a cubic meter. Whether these species are as "important" as a less-specialized species that is more widespread and adaptable is a matter for debate. But in terms of estimating the total number of species, the species area curve holds across different types of ecosystems. As you spread out from the small plot you surveyed in detail, you encounter new species and repeat species at a predictable rate, until you hit a new type of ecosystem.
A really good article called How many species are there on Earth?" [ciesin.org] explains all of this in much greater and more accurate detail.