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How Many Species Are There on Earth and in the Ocean?
The diversity of life is one of the most striking aspects of our planet; hence knowing how many species inhabit Earth is among the most fundamental questions in science. Yet the answer to this question remains enigmatic, as efforts to sample the world's biodiversity to date have been limited an...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2011
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3160336/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21886479 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001127 |
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author | Mora, Camilo Tittensor, Derek P. Adl, Sina Simpson, Alastair G. B. Worm, Boris |
author_facet | Mora, Camilo Tittensor, Derek P. Adl, Sina Simpson, Alastair G. B. Worm, Boris |
author_sort | Mora, Camilo |
collection | PubMed |
description | The diversity of life is one of the most striking aspects of our planet; hence knowing how many species inhabit Earth is among the most fundamental questions in science. Yet the answer to this question remains enigmatic, as efforts to sample the world's biodiversity to date have been limited and thus have precluded direct quantification of global species richness, and because indirect estimates rely on assumptions that have proven highly controversial. Here we show that the higher taxonomic classification of species (i.e., the assignment of species to phylum, class, order, family, and genus) follows a consistent and predictable pattern from which the total number of species in a taxonomic group can be estimated. This approach was validated against well-known taxa, and when applied to all domains of life, it predicts ∼8.7 million (±1.3 million SE) eukaryotic species globally, of which ∼2.2 million (±0.18 million SE) are marine. In spite of 250 years of taxonomic classification and over 1.2 million species already catalogued in a central database, our results suggest that some 86% of existing species on Earth and 91% of species in the ocean still await description. Renewed interest in further exploration and taxonomy is required if this significant gap in our knowledge of life on Earth is to be closed. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3160336 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2011 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-31603362011-08-30 How Many Species Are There on Earth and in the Ocean? Mora, Camilo Tittensor, Derek P. Adl, Sina Simpson, Alastair G. B. Worm, Boris PLoS Biol Research Article The diversity of life is one of the most striking aspects of our planet; hence knowing how many species inhabit Earth is among the most fundamental questions in science. Yet the answer to this question remains enigmatic, as efforts to sample the world's biodiversity to date have been limited and thus have precluded direct quantification of global species richness, and because indirect estimates rely on assumptions that have proven highly controversial. Here we show that the higher taxonomic classification of species (i.e., the assignment of species to phylum, class, order, family, and genus) follows a consistent and predictable pattern from which the total number of species in a taxonomic group can be estimated. This approach was validated against well-known taxa, and when applied to all domains of life, it predicts ∼8.7 million (±1.3 million SE) eukaryotic species globally, of which ∼2.2 million (±0.18 million SE) are marine. In spite of 250 years of taxonomic classification and over 1.2 million species already catalogued in a central database, our results suggest that some 86% of existing species on Earth and 91% of species in the ocean still await description. Renewed interest in further exploration and taxonomy is required if this significant gap in our knowledge of life on Earth is to be closed. Public Library of Science 2011-08-23 /pmc/articles/PMC3160336/ /pubmed/21886479 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001127 Text en Mora et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Mora, Camilo Tittensor, Derek P. Adl, Sina Simpson, Alastair G. B. Worm, Boris How Many Species Are There on Earth and in the Ocean? |
title | How Many Species Are There on Earth and in the Ocean? |
title_full | How Many Species Are There on Earth and in the Ocean? |
title_fullStr | How Many Species Are There on Earth and in the Ocean? |
title_full_unstemmed | How Many Species Are There on Earth and in the Ocean? |
title_short | How Many Species Are There on Earth and in the Ocean? |
title_sort | how many species are there on earth and in the ocean? |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3160336/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21886479 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001127 |
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