Just how many different species are there? To date nobody has a precise answer – but it doesn’t stop scientists trying to work it out… <\/p>
The astonishing diversity of life on our planet is one of its most distinctive features. Actually counting how many species of animals and plants – not to mention fungi and microscopic creatures – exist is extremely difficult, and to date nobody has a precise answer.<\/strong><\/p> Species new to science are turning up all the time. Estimates from experts in taxonomy differ enormously, from as little as three million to as great as 100 million. A study in the journal PLoS Biology <\/a>suggests that there are roughly 8.7 million species of eukaryote <\/a>(that is, all complex life such as animals, plants and fungi, but excluding bacteria and viruses), of which about 2.2 million species live in the sea. <\/p> Though some 1.2 million species have been catalogued over the past 250 years, the same report estimated that a staggering 86 per cent of species on land and 91 per cent of marine creatures<\/a> have yet to be discovered.<\/p> The problem is that the results you get depend strongly on how you use existing knowledge to extrapolate the number of species yet to be found.<\/p> The PLoS study used a metric based on the idea that ‘higher’ taxonomic ranks (such as classes or orders) are discovered more rarely than lower ones (such as species). But this is just one of a whole 200 of methods to estimate species number.<\/p> For example, ecological theorist Robert May used the idea that larger creatures were rarer than smaller ones to estimate that there were 10-50 million species; fungal specialist David Hawksworth used a rough estimate that there were six species of fungus for every plant to estimate 1.6 million fungi species; and analysis of the rate at which new species of flowering plant are named led to a prediction that 13-18 per cent of flowering plant species remain unknown. <\/p> Given how rapidly we are wiping out species, many organisms will probably become extinct before they are known to science.<\/p> Just how many different species are there? To date nobody has a precise answer – but it doesn’t stop scientists trying to work it out… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":39671,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"2"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/06\/how-many-species-are-there-a-lot-if-you-count-animals-plants-and-fungi-heres-an-estimated-guess.jpg",2560,2374,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/06\/how-many-species-are-there-a-lot-if-you-count-animals-plants-and-fungi-heres-an-estimated-guess-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/06\/how-many-species-are-there-a-lot-if-you-count-animals-plants-and-fungi-heres-an-estimated-guess-300x278.jpg",300,278,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/06\/how-many-species-are-there-a-lot-if-you-count-animals-plants-and-fungi-heres-an-estimated-guess-768x712.jpg",768,712,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/06\/how-many-species-are-there-a-lot-if-you-count-animals-plants-and-fungi-heres-an-estimated-guess-1024x950.jpg",800,742,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/06\/how-many-species-are-there-a-lot-if-you-count-animals-plants-and-fungi-heres-an-estimated-guess-1536x1424.jpg",1536,1424,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/06\/how-many-species-are-there-a-lot-if-you-count-animals-plants-and-fungi-heres-an-estimated-guess-2048x1899.jpg",2048,1899,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Just how many different species are there? To date nobody has a precise answer - but it doesn't stop scientists trying to work it out...","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/39670"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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