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Completing Linnaeus’s inventory of the Swedish insect fauna: Only 5,000 species left?

Despite more than 250 years of taxonomic research, we still have only a vague idea about the true size and composition of the faunas and floras of the planet. Many biodiversity inventories provide limited insight because they focus on a small taxonomic subsample or a tiny geographic area. Here, we r...

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Autores principales: Ronquist, Fredrik, Forshage, Mattias, Häggqvist, Sibylle, Karlsson, Dave, Hovmöller, Rasmus, Bergsten, Johannes, Holston, Kevin, Britton, Tom, Abenius, Johan, Andersson, Bengt, Buhl, Peter Neerup, Coulianos, Carl-Cedric, Fjellberg, Arne, Gertsson, Carl-Axel, Hellqvist, Sven, Jaschhof, Mathias, Kjærandsen, Jostein, Klopfstein, Seraina, Kobro, Sverre, Liston, Andrew, Meier, Rudolf, Pollet, Marc, Riedel, Matthias, Roháček, Jindřich, Schuppenhauer, Meike, Stigenberg, Julia, Struwe, Ingemar, Taeger, Andreas, Ulefors, Sven-Olof, Varga, Oleksandr, Withers, Phil, Gärdenfors, Ulf
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7055846/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32130216
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0228561
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author Ronquist, Fredrik
Forshage, Mattias
Häggqvist, Sibylle
Karlsson, Dave
Hovmöller, Rasmus
Bergsten, Johannes
Holston, Kevin
Britton, Tom
Abenius, Johan
Andersson, Bengt
Buhl, Peter Neerup
Coulianos, Carl-Cedric
Fjellberg, Arne
Gertsson, Carl-Axel
Hellqvist, Sven
Jaschhof, Mathias
Kjærandsen, Jostein
Klopfstein, Seraina
Kobro, Sverre
Liston, Andrew
Meier, Rudolf
Pollet, Marc
Riedel, Matthias
Roháček, Jindřich
Schuppenhauer, Meike
Stigenberg, Julia
Struwe, Ingemar
Taeger, Andreas
Ulefors, Sven-Olof
Varga, Oleksandr
Withers, Phil
Gärdenfors, Ulf
author_facet Ronquist, Fredrik
Forshage, Mattias
Häggqvist, Sibylle
Karlsson, Dave
Hovmöller, Rasmus
Bergsten, Johannes
Holston, Kevin
Britton, Tom
Abenius, Johan
Andersson, Bengt
Buhl, Peter Neerup
Coulianos, Carl-Cedric
Fjellberg, Arne
Gertsson, Carl-Axel
Hellqvist, Sven
Jaschhof, Mathias
Kjærandsen, Jostein
Klopfstein, Seraina
Kobro, Sverre
Liston, Andrew
Meier, Rudolf
Pollet, Marc
Riedel, Matthias
Roháček, Jindřich
Schuppenhauer, Meike
Stigenberg, Julia
Struwe, Ingemar
Taeger, Andreas
Ulefors, Sven-Olof
Varga, Oleksandr
Withers, Phil
Gärdenfors, Ulf
author_sort Ronquist, Fredrik
collection PubMed
description Despite more than 250 years of taxonomic research, we still have only a vague idea about the true size and composition of the faunas and floras of the planet. Many biodiversity inventories provide limited insight because they focus on a small taxonomic subsample or a tiny geographic area. Here, we report on the size and composition of the Swedish insect fauna, thought to represent roughly half of the diversity of multicellular life in one of the largest European countries. Our results are based on more than a decade of data from the Swedish Taxonomy Initiative and its massive inventory of the country’s insect fauna, the Swedish Malaise Trap Project The fauna is considered one of the best known in the world, but the initiative has nevertheless revealed a surprising amount of hidden diversity: more than 3,000 new species (301 new to science) have been documented so far. Here, we use three independent methods to analyze the true size and composition of the fauna at the family or subfamily level: (1) assessments by experts who have been working on the most poorly known groups in the fauna; (2) estimates based on the proportion of new species discovered in the Malaise trap inventory; and (3) extrapolations based on species abundance and incidence data from the inventory. For the last method, we develop a new estimator, the combined non-parametric estimator, which we show is less sensitive to poor coverage of the species pool than other popular estimators. The three methods converge on similar estimates of the size and composition of the fauna, suggesting that it comprises around 33,000 species. Of those, 8,600 (26%) were unknown at the start of the inventory and 5,000 (15%) still await discovery. We analyze the taxonomic and ecological composition of the estimated fauna, and show that most of the new species belong to Hymenoptera and Diptera groups that are decomposers or parasitoids. Thus, current knowledge of the Swedish insect fauna is strongly biased taxonomically and ecologically, and we show that similar but even stronger biases have distorted our understanding of the fauna in the past. We analyze latitudinal gradients in the size and composition of known European insect faunas and show that several of the patterns contradict the Swedish data, presumably due to similar knowledge biases. Addressing these biases is critical in understanding insect biomes and the ecosystem services they provide. Our results emphasize the need to broaden the taxonomic scope of current insect monitoring efforts, a task that is all the more urgent as recent studies indicate a possible worldwide decline in insect faunas.
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spelling pubmed-70558462020-03-13 Completing Linnaeus’s inventory of the Swedish insect fauna: Only 5,000 species left? Ronquist, Fredrik Forshage, Mattias Häggqvist, Sibylle Karlsson, Dave Hovmöller, Rasmus Bergsten, Johannes Holston, Kevin Britton, Tom Abenius, Johan Andersson, Bengt Buhl, Peter Neerup Coulianos, Carl-Cedric Fjellberg, Arne Gertsson, Carl-Axel Hellqvist, Sven Jaschhof, Mathias Kjærandsen, Jostein Klopfstein, Seraina Kobro, Sverre Liston, Andrew Meier, Rudolf Pollet, Marc Riedel, Matthias Roháček, Jindřich Schuppenhauer, Meike Stigenberg, Julia Struwe, Ingemar Taeger, Andreas Ulefors, Sven-Olof Varga, Oleksandr Withers, Phil Gärdenfors, Ulf PLoS One Research Article Despite more than 250 years of taxonomic research, we still have only a vague idea about the true size and composition of the faunas and floras of the planet. Many biodiversity inventories provide limited insight because they focus on a small taxonomic subsample or a tiny geographic area. Here, we report on the size and composition of the Swedish insect fauna, thought to represent roughly half of the diversity of multicellular life in one of the largest European countries. Our results are based on more than a decade of data from the Swedish Taxonomy Initiative and its massive inventory of the country’s insect fauna, the Swedish Malaise Trap Project The fauna is considered one of the best known in the world, but the initiative has nevertheless revealed a surprising amount of hidden diversity: more than 3,000 new species (301 new to science) have been documented so far. Here, we use three independent methods to analyze the true size and composition of the fauna at the family or subfamily level: (1) assessments by experts who have been working on the most poorly known groups in the fauna; (2) estimates based on the proportion of new species discovered in the Malaise trap inventory; and (3) extrapolations based on species abundance and incidence data from the inventory. For the last method, we develop a new estimator, the combined non-parametric estimator, which we show is less sensitive to poor coverage of the species pool than other popular estimators. The three methods converge on similar estimates of the size and composition of the fauna, suggesting that it comprises around 33,000 species. Of those, 8,600 (26%) were unknown at the start of the inventory and 5,000 (15%) still await discovery. We analyze the taxonomic and ecological composition of the estimated fauna, and show that most of the new species belong to Hymenoptera and Diptera groups that are decomposers or parasitoids. Thus, current knowledge of the Swedish insect fauna is strongly biased taxonomically and ecologically, and we show that similar but even stronger biases have distorted our understanding of the fauna in the past. We analyze latitudinal gradients in the size and composition of known European insect faunas and show that several of the patterns contradict the Swedish data, presumably due to similar knowledge biases. Addressing these biases is critical in understanding insect biomes and the ecosystem services they provide. Our results emphasize the need to broaden the taxonomic scope of current insect monitoring efforts, a task that is all the more urgent as recent studies indicate a possible worldwide decline in insect faunas. Public Library of Science 2020-03-04 /pmc/articles/PMC7055846/ /pubmed/32130216 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0228561 Text en © 2020 Ronquist 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 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Ronquist, Fredrik
Forshage, Mattias
Häggqvist, Sibylle
Karlsson, Dave
Hovmöller, Rasmus
Bergsten, Johannes
Holston, Kevin
Britton, Tom
Abenius, Johan
Andersson, Bengt
Buhl, Peter Neerup
Coulianos, Carl-Cedric
Fjellberg, Arne
Gertsson, Carl-Axel
Hellqvist, Sven
Jaschhof, Mathias
Kjærandsen, Jostein
Klopfstein, Seraina
Kobro, Sverre
Liston, Andrew
Meier, Rudolf
Pollet, Marc
Riedel, Matthias
Roháček, Jindřich
Schuppenhauer, Meike
Stigenberg, Julia
Struwe, Ingemar
Taeger, Andreas
Ulefors, Sven-Olof
Varga, Oleksandr
Withers, Phil
Gärdenfors, Ulf
Completing Linnaeus’s inventory of the Swedish insect fauna: Only 5,000 species left?
title Completing Linnaeus’s inventory of the Swedish insect fauna: Only 5,000 species left?
title_full Completing Linnaeus’s inventory of the Swedish insect fauna: Only 5,000 species left?
title_fullStr Completing Linnaeus’s inventory of the Swedish insect fauna: Only 5,000 species left?
title_full_unstemmed Completing Linnaeus’s inventory of the Swedish insect fauna: Only 5,000 species left?
title_short Completing Linnaeus’s inventory of the Swedish insect fauna: Only 5,000 species left?
title_sort completing linnaeus’s inventory of the swedish insect fauna: only 5,000 species left?
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7055846/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32130216
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0228561
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