Open Species Database Breaks Half-Million Mark 32
ferienhausversicherung writes "Biologists estimate that about 1.75 million species, from bacteria to blue whales, have already been identified on Earth. But there may be anywhere between 3 million and 12 million more yet to be discovered. An online catalogue of all known life on Earth now has half a million species in its freely available database. Another promising effort is Wikispecies. Started in August 2004, this is an offshoot of the Wikimedia group, whose free online encyclopaedia is constructed by users themselves." (And Wikipedia itself is about to publish its 500,000th English entry -- if you hurry, perhaps it will be yours.)
project proposal: digital ecoregion map? (Score:3, Informative)
Understanding most environmental security problems requires some base map. Unfortunately these maps are not available generally in digital map form, which is one reason a digital ecoregion map [livingplatform.ca] standard is required.
There is a digital map petition urging the publishers to make the material available electronically under Creative-Commons by-nc-sa [livingplatform.ca]. This helps those interested in helping preserve the 238 Global 200 priority ecoregions and complements WWF's own plans: "Every school in the United States will be sent 10 ecoregion maps and teachers guides to get students interested in visiting the web page. Each ecoregion page will include educational descriptions highlighting important biodiversity features of the ecoregion and a summary of the conservation situation. The technical descriptions detail the biology and status of each ecoregion. There also will be one or more photographs depicting the natural habitat of each ecoregion. It has been a Herculean task to gather photographs of natural habitats of the world. We could not have accomplished as much as we have without your willingness to contribute your images." - David M. Olson, Ph.D., Director, Conservation Science Program, World Wildlife Fund US, email: david.olson wwfus org.
Current the WWF-US seeks only [zaptron.com] "a) the right to publish the photographs on the World Wide Web as part of the Wild World educational web site created by WWF in association with National Geographic Society, underwritten by Ford Motor Company; b) The right to crop and otherwise alter and edit the photographs, as WWF deems appropriate, to fit space or to enhance the function or effectiveness of use of the photographs."
This comment is licensed under CC-by-nc-sa 2.0 [creativecommons.org] - see http://www.livingplatform.ca/tiki-index.php?page=
wikispecies (Score:3, Interesting)
Wouldn't it be more usefull integrated with the Open Species Database?
I find it funny (Score:1)
This achievement is great and all, but is there a link to the aforementioned database?
Re:I find it funny (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I find it funny (Score:1, Insightful)
No it isn't. Finding life on other planets would be the most important find since fire. It would change the religious and philosophic views of billions of people. It would mean we are not alone. It would teach us a great deal.
Finding another version of a spotted frog or deep sea worm is pretty great, but pales in comparison to the above.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I find it funny (Score:1, Interesting)
The whole "religious impact" meme surely didn't just pop out of thin air. There is probably a minority of people out there who insist that Earth is the only planet with life in the universe.
Re:I find it funny (Score:3, Interesting)
THe queestion is, what will happen IF we discover life, especially intelligent life out there. I once attended a discussion by fundamentalist Christians about the issue and they immediately stated that bringing the word to the Aliens would be an immediate priority. For most people first contact would probably be meaningless in any case especially if we find microor
Re:I find it funny (Score:1, Insightful)
how odd (Score:1)
Re:how odd (Score:2)
Wikispecies seems a bad idea (Score:3, Insightful)
With Wikispecies it's information that is scientific in nature and accuracy becomes paramount.
How long until everyone settles on the truly accurate definition of the Basselope? How about the purple-headed trowser snake?
Bad idea I say.
On Extinction (Score:4, Interesting)
Obviously, I'm not talking about successful species that are hunted to extinction by humans. I know I'm going to get 50 replies from people who swell up with emotion and react to my words rather than thinking about them, who are going to say, "yeah, but humans cause extinctions." I know that. Thanks. My point is that there are millions of species on the planet and extinction and evolution is a natural process that occurs whether humans exist or not.
I just finished reading Bill Bryson's excellent book, A Short History of Nearly Everything. There's a great story about a tiny island off the coast of New Zealand. The first human to ever live on that island was a lighthouse keeper. It turned out, he had a cat. Every few days, the cat would drag the carcass of a dead bird into the house. The lighthouse keeper sent one of these dead birds to a university professor who recognized that it was a new species, never before seen by science. The professor made the trip down to the island, but by the time he got there, the cat had killed every bird on the little island. Apparently, those birds didn't live anywhere else. They've never been seen again. In less than a year, one cat had made an entire species extinct.
Many an environmentalist will tell you that the point of the story is how destructive human beings are. But I think that if you look at this logically, you'll draw a different conclusion. Long before man arrived, that species of bird had failed to evolve a solid foothold in its ecosystem. With all of New Zealand right there, the best that bird could do was live on one tiny island. It's true, that cat wiped them out. But it's also true that, all by itself and without any human influence, that species had dwindled to down to a population tiny enough to be destroyed by one cat. Had the cat not come along, the next hurricane to hit the island would have made them extinct anyway.
So, there are millions of species on our planet, and I think we should study and catalog all of them. But let's also acknowledge the fact that no matter what we do, 99.9% of those species are going to be evolutionary dead ends.
Re:On Extinction (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:On Extinction (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:On Extinction (Score:2)
Uh-oh, look out. Here comes "logic," which really means "you're an idiot if you don't see things my way."
I just finished reading Bill Bryson's excellent book, A Short History of Nearly Everything.
Then you might also try reading "Song of the Dodo," by David Quammen. In it Quammen details incidents just such as this, which are all really about the topic of island bio-geography. You'll realize that the bird hadn't "failed to evolve a sol
Major species missing? (Score:2)
than many books of that sort remember. That puts it one step ahead
of print already
Uhh, LINK?! (Score:3, Insightful)
That's awesome.
WHERE THE HELL IS IT?!
last? (Score:1)
last post!
(Why hasn't this caught on?)
How would you know? (Score:1)
How do one come up with a figure like that about something one doesn't know? :D