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Every Species on Earth
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."
[we know] 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...
Seems to this non-biologist that it's more like knowing only 1/5th to 1/50th (or to be more precise, 1/50th to 1/5th) of the periodic table...
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
[[Likening this dearth of information to doing chemistry knowing only one third of the periodic table]]
how about likening this dearth to knowing only one third of the COMPOUNDS formed by those elements.
there are less then 100 million elements in the universe. Being several orders of magnitude WRONG just angers me.
[[Ay fukkand lyke ane furious Fornicatour]]
Likening this dearth of information to doing chemistry knowing only one third of the periodic table,
Think about this. How many different species exist for each genus? Its like doing chemistry and not knowing every single isotope for a particular chemical.
Why must we count everything?! We're like Midas, only everything we touch seems to disappear.
:P
I think the stats are:
???? -> 1900 - 75 species extinct
1900 -> 1970 - 75 more species exitinct
1970 -> now - 75,000 species extinct
Do we really wanna find them all?
"Old man yells at systemd"
who says they have all of the elements ?
just because they cant predict that there are ones they havent found doesnt mean they have them all...
i bet the periodic table is missing at leats a 100 of them...
What about the cutting down of the rain forest? Aren't things dying out all the time in that region because of industrialism? How are you going to keep an existing database of everything living if it changes so frequently? Sounds like a big undertaking with a less than good return.
Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit.
HOLLISTER: OK. Just one thing before the disco, Holly tells me that he's sensed a non-human life form aboard.
LISTER: Sir, it's Rimmer!
-- "Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?"
"Twenty-five years is one human generation," he said, "but it's six generations of students." If each successive student generation inspires similar growth in the next, "at the end of that pyramid you could have several hundred thousand new taxonomists."
Just classify a bug and send this email to 10 of your friends, and put your name at the bottom of the list, and remove the person at the top of the list!
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Oh, they won't need any new recruits. 25 years would be plenty of time for us to get the number of undiscovered species down to managable levels.
How can they possibly know how many species are undiscovered?
The difference between some species must be so small. They probably have a bunch of duplicates of species. I wonder what kind of scale do they use to seperate species out?
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
1. Catalog all species
2. ???
3. Profit!
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
:)
Who wants to go find some stamps?
Since we are interested in identifying all Earth's species, would it take longer to "discover" them all scientifically or perhaps to simply allow mankind with his pollution and environmental manipulation to continue erradicating species until we know all those remaining?
sig
instead of trying to tabulate the species that we haven't identified yet, how about plain dead eliminating them ? At the rate the US Air force is bombing Afghanistan, pretty everything should be dead down there.
Just declare all non-identified species as terrorists and we're done !
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
Oh wait, we'll just engineer one.
They might not be around in 25 years.
Any animal that competes with human beings, is a threat to human beings, or requires undisturbed access large pieces of land in areas close to human habitation should be done first. Elephants, tigers, grizzly bears, etc.
Also, better look at any plant or animal that has a high degree of integration with their ecosphere (global warming will change their ecosphere faster than they can adapt).
Oh, anything at either poles - human-based pollutants seem to gravitate to these areas.
Better get everything in the ocean as well - over fishing and other human activities is disrupting the food chain.
Any animal or plant that lives in any forest that is accessible by the logging companies probably should be classified early, as well.
Finally, any animal that has "trophy" value or is poached for body parts to be made into aphrodisiacs won't be around for long.
Molecular biology is where the action is at. Just looking at organisms and trying to classify them isn't really interesting or useful anymore.
- Have a picture
Noah got a pair of every species into his arc. I'll ask him, that should cover mammals.
/. classify the images which contain birds.
For the sea, I suppose I could just use another scientific principle. Take a litre of sea water, identify the number of species in it, and multiply by the volume of the sea.
For the air, I'll command a NASA spy sattelite and have it log images to a website, and have all of
Hows that?
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
Let us not forget the several species uncovered by Chuck Jones in the Roadrunner cartoons.
Roadrunner:
Velocitous Maximus
Accelleratii Incredibus
Wile E. Coyote:
Appetitum Gigandum
Eatius birdius
Can't remember any more...
I'm sure there are dozens of unidentified species living in there...
. . . the size that Noah's Ark should have been with 10 million pairs of creatures onboard.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
I hate tracking down bugs.
What do you mean, not those kind of bugs?
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
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.
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.
I read the article and it doesn't seem to offer any evidence other than speculation as to where this number comes from. It seems kinda large to me. I know humans don't occupy *every* place on the planet, but there are very few areas within the top 10,000 feet of the Earth's crust that aren't accessible to humans already. Are they suggesting that life is blossoming in the mantle?
How exactly did scientists come upon this number?
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
As someone who has described a species (and a genus while we are counting) and someone who uses taxonomic literature all too frequently I feel like I can say a few things:
1. Taxonomy is really important. Most of biology rests on good taxonomy.
2. Good taxonomic work requires massive amounts of work and training.
3. Bad taxonomy is worse than no taxonomy.
4. Taxonomic work is massively under funded and under appreciated... and it will continue to be so... as long as the tenure system requires lots of high profile papers (which taxonomy papers are not high profile and they take a long time to write).
The more taxonomy is appreciated the better, and I really hope that they pull it off... But we have a better chance of microsoft embracing the open source software movement.
MAK
Um, how will they know when they've found everything?
Nice idea, but it is not going to happen. For example, take deep sea hydrothermal vents. The life around these was completely unexpected (different species, but similar to other species else where). There is a high probability that other such unexpected islands of life remain to be discovered.
Secondly, take places like Lake Vostok. 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.
Every time we venture into the black depths we find many new, interesting creatures. If we calculate how much of the earth is still unexplored and how many new life forms we find every time we venture into one of these areas I'm sure you can see where they get these numbers.
:)
Until we find new means of finding these animals and cataloging them I think that the 25 year estimate is quite optimistic. Why is it that we havent caught or even seen a living giant squid. For myself I find this type of research fasanating.
Sorry for the spelling
If I were only smart enough to accomplish the things I dream about.. Or maybe too dumb to care.
Please refrain from using profanity in your posts. It is impolite and reflects poorly on your grammatical and communication skills.
The article doesn't mention anything about taking genetic samples but it would not be a bad idea to store DNA samples of all living things. Of course, this would give a good way to do the taxonomy as well, since the diversion of the DNA can be traced backward.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
"Species" is one of those fuzzy terms that everyone thinks they know the meaning of, but on closer examination it's hard to pin down. Kind of like "teal" (is it blue? green? dark turquoise?) or "pr0n".
The current usage of the term can denote two groups of genetically identical (well, allowing for normal variation) animals but that do not share overlapping habitat ranges as separate species. Given the opportunity, they could interbreed and produce fertile offspring (the "classic" distinction of a species -- which fails utterly for things that reproduce asexually and for morphologically distinct animals -- like lions and tigers -- that can interbreed and produce fertile offspring, but generally don't).
Thus you get ecofreaks complaining about the imminent extinction of the left-handed mottled weed rat because the two fields where they live are about to be paved over, when in reality that critter is genetically identical to the right-footed fuzz-backed bush mouse and the big-eared worm-tailed ground squirrel that just happen to live in different areas and were originally described by different biologists.
So, what's their definition of "species"?
-- Alastair
The ocean is a long, long ways from being completely explored. Especially the very deepest parts - in fact, everytime that they take a sub way down there, they find at least one new species. Every single trip! It's the place to be if you're a scientist and want to actually discover something new. Sure, the Rainforest has a ton of stuff yet, but mostly just tiny insects and such. That's not nearly as interesting as discovering a 10 pound fish that gives off a blue glow, or a bed of never before seen plant life that's able to sustain itself without photosynthasis.
He would insult the Universe.
That is, he would insult everybody in it. Individually, personally, one by one, and (this was the thing he really decided to grit his teeth over) in alphabetical order.
When people protested to him, as they sometimes had done, that the plan was not merely misguided but actually impossible because of the number of people being born and dying all the time, he would merely fix them with a steely look and say, ``A man can dream can't he?''
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Yesterday, I found this out this one of my message board threads.
Brief summary: "This is the latest figure reported at the American Museum of Natural History Social
Insects Website ("AntBase"), up by almost 500 since the last update. It has been estimated that another 20,000 remain to be described and named." --Dr. Ant
Wired News, CNN, and Netscape's News mentioned this AntBase.org Web site yesterday as well.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I'm trying to write a website to do this. I've only recently started. I probably won't be looking for funding, but perhaps at some point donations for hosting if it ever became popular that I couldn't hosting it on the extra bandwidth I have already. I'm planning on it being a free site. Hopefully no ads, or maybe just text ads (I've taken a liking to the ones on k5).
I will rely on knowledgeable volunteers to make entries. As you can imagine, I've thought about it a little already and plan it to be very searchable. I want to storing predation information could make it possible to display large food cycle charts and an interesting way to browse the site. I'd like the data to be very high quality of course - hopefully people who specilize in knowledge of the organisms in question will be adding entries, but I want it to be easy to use. As someone commented earlier 'taxonomy isn't useful anymore'. I really don't know, but I think at the least it could be useful for people who want to find out "what I just saw in my backyard".
If anyone has ideas or sugessions, I'd appreciate hearing them.
If we ever get off the rock, it will be interesting to see if the forms of life out there all use the same coding in dna, etc. or are using other forms.
In a similar vien, all, if not most of the computer languages out their are based in some way on English, etc. I wonder which progamming would look like if it was all based on japanese or chinese. how much would be similar, and how much would be profoundly different? It is not all mathematics, after all.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I think this might have trouble getting adequate funding, since it has nothing to do with going to Mars :)
This is not at all like the periodic table in chemistry. If you know anything about the periodic table, you can predict the existence of elements because of slots that a certain number of protrons and neutrons fill. Biology is much more complex and harder to predict.
--avandesande
Th
Hydrogen and helium make up 99% of the universe.
Living things are mostly H,C,N,O,S and P.
What did Astatine ever do for me??
This is not a good analogy. Chemistry, like math or physics, is an exact science where elements are used as "building blocks" for other elements and compounds. Taxonomy is an inexact science, and the fact that a rare Jamaican fruit fly doesn't have a name yet will not affect other areas of science.
More information is always better, but suggesting that this lack of information somehow cripples biologists is sensationalism.
This is just like when they say 10 percent of the U.S. poplulation wasn't counted on the last census. Now, how do they know that!
Who are these people? Where did they go to school?
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
There would have been tons of animals, but can you imagine how many diseases Noah and his family would have had to carry to give to his family line?
Sean D.
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
Why can't scientists ever just admit when they don't know a figure, rather than give some ridiculous range.
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Just wait 25 years...
And at the rate we're going, the number of species on the planet will have dwindled to around 3 million or so by then. This will make the job much easier.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I'm a PhD student in entomology, and I have collected insects in the tropics.
Usually collectors set traps that catch thousands of insects and then pick out the specimens they are interested in personally (usually a very narrow sampling). The rest of the insects usually just go all mixed up to a museum in a jar of alcohol. The label usually just say something like "Malaise Trap, Sumatra 1967 Collector E. Neuman".
At the Swedish Museum of Natural History, where I work, there are jars of assorted insects collected all over the world dating back to the 1930s, just waiting to be picked through.
Keep in mind... tha vast, vast majority of those species are going to be beetles, followed by other insect and "bugs", followed by very, very tiny organisms.
Once you observe something, you change its state. Maybe we shouldn't be "flooding the fields" with scientists looking at every single variation of every single species. The last thing fragile ecosystems need is an army of scientists trampling through them. Why not keep the pace the same as it currently is? Can we really handle the wealth of information we are already receiving? This sounds more like a well intentioned mission statement to generate some funding.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
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 of the total number of species, and insects pretty much account for the rest. 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.
A link about antbase.org. CNN, Wired News, and Netscape's News mentioned about this Web site yesterday.
Brief description from CNN article: "Whether you're looking for fire ants, carpenter ants or some tetramorium flavithorax, the first complete database of the world's 11,000 known ant species can help you out. Scientists say antbase.org is a unique resource for scholars, ecologists or anyone interested in myrmecology -- the scientific study of ants."
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
So lets say I'm endomologist and I happen upon what I believe to be a new species of roach. How exactly does someone pin this as a brand-spankin-new species? I mean, is it possible that there are mistakes, meaning, someone accidentally claimed a new latin name for their discovery when one already existed?
;-). ...but the resolution of the gel sample wouldn't be high enough for the large number of species.
how would this database be indexed if someone did find what they think is a new species? would they enter keywords, which are highly subjective?
someone mentioned a DNA snapshot, a gel image. that would be easier to index b/c it represents in GUID (global unique id...
perhaps in the process of compiling this database, the authors will inadvertently upset the taxonomy applecart.
either way, this should be fairly exciting, but i don't want to look forward to being 55 years old and finally have the database on line! (it's hard enough waiting for warcraftIII)
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Sorry Doug.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
The longer we wait, the less work we'll have!
Many species are very similar. How different is a dog from a coyote? How about an alligator from a crocodile? They are different species, but they're similar enough that the unique information provided by each one is very low.
Elements are far more unique to each other than species, so the scale isn't as linear as '1/50th of the periodic table.'
In any case, the idea was sound, the details are unimporant and not worth splitting hairs about.
"Derp de derp."
Although even fast mutations only result in sub-species in the short term, what consitiutes a new species? A single mutation in a master control gene could completely change the look and working of that sub-species of the species. At what point of change does the new sub-species become a new species?
Example - If a crocodile's scales become scales of bone by changing the master control genes designating the genes responsible for the protien strands used in constructing it etc. (I'm not sure at all if this is possible... it's just an example I thought up off the top of my head). Although that would most likely be considered a new sub-species, What kind of mutations in the master control genes would merrit it being a new species?
That's a bit of a stretch I think.
How many of these species are "leaf nodes" on the evolutionary tree, with only minute differences between the specific species of that family/genus? Our progress in biology isn't *that* severely hampered by not having catalogued all two hundred thousand dung beetle species, each of which differ only in color and antenna length.
IAAT (I am a taxonomist). This is a major pipe dream (at least the do it in 25 years worth).
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.
only infrmatn esentil to understandn mst b tranmitd
Not suprising, with genetic drift and mutations life is constantly changing and adapting to a constantly changing environment. What makes a unique 'unit' of species? Usually some arbitrary human definition -" Distinguishing those that have feathers, and bite, And those that have whiskers, and scratch. " I can just imagine the typical enviromentalist 20 millions years ago at a table selling pasteries to raise funds to "Save the Dinosaurs!".
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
To classify all the species on earth should be easily doable. The most important thing will be to narrow the scope of the reserch. As long humans continue to wipe out between 1/4 million to 4 million species per year, I feel confident that the All Species Foundation will be able to meet their goal.
-Erik -- --This message was written using 73% post-consumer electrons--
This is really a very, very, mammoth task. Most species arent real obvious like gorillas or rhinos. Most of these 10-100 million species are prokaryotes or insects or whatever (apparantly, the most successful group of animals is the beetle, go figure!). These arent easy to discover, identify and characterise. Therefore this is not an easy task, and it could take a long frigging time.
So why not sit back, relax and watch that mass extinction. Apparantly, extinction rates are around 27,000 species per year (although this is - of course - highly speculative). As long as humans carry on with their fantastically cool ability of destroying stuff (lets not get into the environmental debate guys, just go with me here), this should hold up for a few thousand years.
Therefore, lets presume their are 50 million species:
50,000,000 - 2,000,000 = 48,000,000 species yet to be discovered.
48,000,000 / 27,000 = 1777.7 years untill destroy all unknown species.
Not long, huh? Wait a few years longer and we will be down to 1 species. Dont worry folks, by then we will have biosynthetic foodstuff, terraforming units and day trips to jupiter moon.
Seriously though, this does raise an interesting point about preservation of species. There is ALOT of cool stuff out there in nature that is darn useful (chemical processess, drugs, food etc). Maybe we should think about discovering them before they go extinct.
Well, what's really gonna make this easier is the fact that species are disapearing so fast that in 25 years you'll prbably be able to count them all on your fingers...
(Ok, so I exagerate a little.)
You can't take the sky from me...
I have been working off and on again on a project (for my own amusement) that brings together two of my favorite hobbies, computers and herpetology: making a taxonomic (is there such a word)database. I have started and stopped it several times being very disatisfied with standard RDMS for this type of data. The problem I have is the structure tends to be an irregular tree, some orders, families, etc. have suborders, subfamilies, etc. and others don't. I recently have been reading up on Object-Oriented Databases and I think this looks much more promising. Anybody else have experience with similar projects? Any resources somebody could point me towards?
oh yeah, that's right, it can't, they don't exist.
another nail in the coffin for evolution.
give it up guys, your precious theory is falling apart bit by bit every day. evolution is the sickest joke ever
I've been to the zoo and I don't see how there's anywhere near 2 million species let alone 10 million. I would guess there might be no more than a few hundred.
Upon seeing the box was too small, Schrodinger's Elephant breathed a sigh of relief.
The question is, will Big Foot and the Lochness Monster be on that list?
How many of the 10-100 million species they anticipate finding are bacteria?
s tr acts/2000/00-037.htm)
The eco-radicals say there are hundreds of "Species" becoming extinct every day/week/month (depending on how much funding they are asking for), but they don't say species of what. Turns out someone brushed their teeth after a weeklong binge, and exterminated 200 species of plaque.
(And if you think plaque isn't worth saving, check this article about "Intergeneric Communication in Dental Plaque Biofilms". Without this 'streptococcus-rich biofilm', what would these researchers do?
http://www.erc.montana.edu/Res-Lib99-SW/pubs/Ab
Do we really care to "discover" every special variant of the streptococcus bacteria? In every person's mouth? In every dog's and cat's mouth?
Granted the number of insect species is estimated in the multi-millions as well, but to reach 100 million separate species, these guys must be navel-gazing and wondering what lives there.
Slashdothropdis Lathargicus
Large smelly mammal with unusual sense of humor, total lack of social skills, and incapable of proper spelling and grammar. Good with tools. Scavenger instincs. Enjoys free beer.
Someone you trust is one of us.
The folks at BTExact seem to be doing a great job. It is more interesting watching the posts on Slashdot after looking through this baby, because you can see their predictions happening. Anyway, the Cliff notes version is that they predict that all 1.5 Million currently known species will be listed online by 2005. This looks like a strong step in the right direction...
Oh, was that my outside voice?
Biologist CAN'T find all the species because the sasquatch is hiding them all...
Seriously, with the amount of effort required for cryptozoologist to make the scientific community accept the existance of species, no wonder its not progressing very fast.
And since the basic proof that monst scientists want is a dead animal, no wonder we're making everything extinc!
Lets see, one dead animal per university, that makes lots of corpses...if one species is limited to a few thousand individual, proving its existance will require wiping it out!
You can't take the sky from me...
A standard listing of the species in genus canis, eg:http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/chordata/ mammalia/carnivora/canidae.html
shows coyote, dog, red wolf, grey wolf, ... A lot of species that interbreed. Coyote and wolf interbreeding is not uncommon, and dog-wolf breedings are simple although the product can be dangerous to humans.
Stephen Hawking said something that I thought was interesting. I can't seem to locate the exact text, but it went something like:
If God did exist, the kind of God that is popular today, given the assumption that he gave us our minds, it would be a waste to not utilize this gift to it's fullest potential.
A species is broadly a reproductively isolated population. Species come and go all the time, and many are extremely shortlived. So going down the path of classifying all species isn't a good use of resources. Classifying the main genera is much more important. Exercise some kind of discrimination--"this taxon is to be classified, that one isn't much different from the other 2000"--is very important. This species fetishism is just going to involve a lot of wasted effort cataloging almost identical species.
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?
"All your species are belong to us!"
Sanity.html - Error 404 not found
Anyway a lot more then he distroyes. All those dogs, chickens, manipulated plants etc. weren't around 2000 years ago. Are they better or worse? Have they more or less rights to exist? WHO GIVES A SHIT
IT IS COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT
If you stupid city kids want to see strange animals go to the zoo and stop barking about the industrialists/globalisation/capitalists and all your leftish crap.
Remains funny to read though...
As I read this, a single thought popped into my head... but why, in the name of god, was it "Gotta catch'em all!" ????
AHHH!!!
Who else confused this on first reading? I say kill 'em and stuff 'em for future generations. If nothing else, they make freaky ornaments.
"Aww, bugger" - Unlucky Alf
Well, should taxonomy fail, there's always taxidermy...
Q: Does it have hair? :)
A: Yes
Q: Does it have four legs?
A: Yes
Q: Does it have a tail?
A: Yes
Q: Is it a dog? If not please enter the name of this new species
Nobody can accuse you of having a misleading user name.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
The xeno-biologists who have been gathering evidence might finally be heard and get Bigfoot (aka Sasquatch) classified. It's about time. Now, whether or not the Bigfoot-came-from-ufos group will get to amend the classification remains to be seen.
I also hope that scientists come to my apartment and identify the millions of species that must be growing in my roommate's room. It hasn't been disturbed by mop, vaccuum, cleaning rag or other species harmful cleansers in at least 3 years. They are sure to find a good percentage of that unknown percentage of species.
I just want to know one answer: if the dancemonkeyboy is already classified?
Hacker, as a species, would disappear very soon, if RIAA/MPAA have their way with DMCA and all their laws on circumventing devices.
Now we have a little race, to see how many species can we whack off without knowing them before this guy comes along and catalogs them.
While the article mentions microbes, after looking at their site and seeing but one microbiologist on their advisory board of 66 members, I have a feeling the larger effort is going towards finding the multicellular critters. This is quite a shame, considering the amazing diversity and incredible importance of bacteria and archaea.
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
The only way this could be usefull is if they would record genetic information from all species so that they can detect trends in gene mutation.
Other then that it seems like a waste of good resources.
"Living things are mostly H,C,N,O,S and P."
;^)
Yes, but on Wheel of Fortune, in the final puzzle, they give you R,S,T,L,N, and E.
So who's right?
I think this index will only be useful if it is indexed genetically. Most zoologists and taxonomists these days rely on genetic markers to differentiate and identify species. By indexing each species genetcially, one can produce evolutionary trees and QUANTITATIVELY discuss biodiversity and change over time. Without a set of genetically indexed results, the taxonomists are simply encyclopedists; collecting but never analyzing. What's the use?
"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)."
Not really. Ever hear of a liger?
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 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
Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
With the rate living species are disappearing from this earth, we should have identified every living species within the next few decades.
I am a trained taxonomist (PhD) with a governmental position.
Today I have the freedom to spend several million dollars on comparatively large scale projects, like species inventories, executed by laymen with no, absolutely no traing in taxonomy.
If I try to spend my budget on highly trained personnel at federal institutions... They (my superiors) reply - Hey, we don't want them to be in charge of us; they can apply for their own money...
This sux my balls, but without the pleasure.
Fuk the system,
Dunno if i missed something, but what is the basis for saying that we have 10 to 100 million species on earth since begining. The range is too large for the estimates to have any credibilty. Do we know definitevely that its not 3 million or maybe 2million and one.
Look, in the scriptures GOD gives us dominion over all of the animals. That includes killing them off if we want to. Honestly if GOD was such a big fan of the dodo bird or the bengal tiger he could just make more of them, right?? The fact that He hasn't speaks volumes about this issue. Can you name me one human who has been harmed by the absence of the dodo bird? You can't? Oh, poor you. I say to hell with species and let's wipe out as many as possible. the lord will bring back the ones He likes. In the meantime we can actually **advance** the human race instead of going back to the stone age like you damn hippys want us to do
If ever in Tennessee/North Carolina, drop in to Cosby and give a day or two to help.
The All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory of the Smokies!
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
I assume this was sarcasm, if not then get a life!!
Linux sucks me off!!
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WINDOWS 4 EVER
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gates ownz me.
.
Does the term "entombed" apply when in fact life under a million years of ice is ALIVE.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
Why bother with this foundation? If they just wait a few years enough species will die off that they'll have 100% coverage. Problem solved with 0 extra effort.
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 whole point of the periodic table is that it is possible to predict properties of chemicals based on their position in the table. When not all of the elements were known, the periodic table was used to see what was missing so we could actively search for those elements.
Remember that you can patent found plant species, so there are plenty of patents left to be had with very little work involved.
All this talk about species this and species that, it's so very nineteenth century. It's as if genetics had never been discovered. Like trying to use Newton to explain atoms.
After all, a species is an taxonomic construct, an artifact. It is a convenient way to order the vast phylogenetic diversity. But it is a macrobiological world-view made quaint when viewed against our knowledge of microbiology.
If they're undiscovered...Um...How do we nkow they exist?
This above all: To thine ownself be true... --Lord Polonius Hamlet: Act I Scene 3
Damn straight! But even then they'll pose them so they seem even cuddlier.
The way they talk about the project makes me think that they see taxonomy as fixed once things have been classified in some way: they aim at classifying everything, as if this would be the end of taxonomy (they barely mention specimens and specimen description information, and their 1994 *still draft* report says ?it does mean that a universally accepted name (e.g.,a Latin binomial) is the means of sharing information about that organism among countries?, and worse ?Even the application of a Latin binomial (?describing ? the species) is a useful conjecture about the traits of that species?). I guess their intent is therefore to collect names and determinations.
But a repository of species names is nearly pointless in itself. What does that mean to have a name? What does it represent? Classifications are built from characteristics you see in specimens. These characteristics can be phenotype-level characteristics or molecular/DNA-level characteristics. There is no rule to select the characteristics of interest to you. It is the result of grouping specimens together because they exhibit similarities. Because there is no rule for choosing these characteristics, two taxonomists may choose a different set for any kinds of reason (one knows more, one has access to techniques others don?t, he collected more specimens, whatever), and will therefore build different classifications. Imagine you?re trying to classify your Lego bricks. If you decide that colour is important, you certainly won?t create the same groupings as if you chose shape, or even size.
[From now on I?ll talk about plant taxonomy because it?s the domain in which I work] Once you have created your groups according to your chosen characteristics, you need to name them. That?s where names enter the equation. Unlike classification, in plant taxonomy, nomenclature is regulated: you have to apply the International Code of Botanical Taxonomy (ICBN). To simplify things far too much, the ICBN says that you must consider type specimens, and name groups in which they appear with the names the type specimens are the types of. Type specimens are specimens that have been elected as representatives of a name. When you end up with many type specimens in a group, you must choose the oldest one. If you don?t have any, you need to elect a new one and give it a name.
That?s where it becomes confusing. Because you name groups using types, you don?t really control how things are named. You don?t just put a name on a specimen because you feel like it. A consequence of that is that if you group specimens A and B together and B is a type specimen, the group containing A and B will receive the name for which B is a type (let?s call it b). Now imagine that you use a different set of characteristics to build your groups (imagine shape instead of colour), you might group A with C. If C is a type specimen, then the group containing A and C will be called whatever C was called (let?s call it c). Now A, a physical specimen you can touch, has two names, and depending on whom you trust, you will call it differently: b or c. Conversely, a single name can refer to very distinct sets of specimens because of the type specimen game. (and this gets even messier if you consider multinomial group names such as species, variety, forma, etc)
Imagine this at the scale of taxonomy (at least plant taxonomy) in general and you have an idea of the real problem. This is why a repository of all species names, although of practical value (you don?t have to search for these names), is pointless for understanding biodiversity. If the All Species people want to record accurate information, they need to record not only the names, but all their meanings (the specimens that compose them). Now that?s another scale to the problem.
Why is it important to record everything a name might mean? Take molecular people. They have no interest in taxonomy. For them it?s all been done and it?s all clear. Imagine they extract a substance from specimen A or its full DNA sequence. What is A exactly? Is it a b, whose group has some properties you know and may be of interest to you, or is it a c, a group that you don?t anything about because you don?t care about taxonomy therefore you don?t know things may be classified in different ways? Don?t you think it could be important if a competitor patented a drug extracted from species c, which happens to be exactly the one you?re working on without knowing it?
"There are several other examples of different species interbreeding.
Most commonly this happens with humans."
Oh great! Make a controversial statement like that. Sure, go ahead. You just opened up a whole new can of worms buddy. A huge can of 50,000 worms to be exact. And each one is a new species.
That just increased the number of species. Now the new estimate for the total number of species is 10,050,000 to 100,050,000. And since we have to catalog these 50,000 worms, you set us back a whole year. I hope you're happy.
Signed,
Prof. I. M. Yuseless
Chairman
Worldwide Council of Species Discovery and Navel-gazing Sciences
Discoverer of the Who (Horton was a student of mine)
Of course. How else will we be able to finish our cookbook?
I assume from your screen name that you are an expert on gators, crocs, and all animals in general? You make the statement that crocs and gators are almost the same exept for minor differences. You don't back that up, however. In fact, your own analogy proves you wrong. Elements that differ by a single atom are in fact quite different in behavior (a helium bomb), and animals that are related like dogs and coyotes (or humans and chimpanzees) are DIFFERENT in more than just a superficial way.
11006 ant species as of 2/28/2002, & counting
The DOJ has said that 2/3 of these were against the Microsoft Settlement, but that only 47 of those species were deemed "significant".
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
I have always had questions about classifying animals into so many species. If you can classify certain bugs and birds so specifically based on their appearance, can you then do the same for humans? Would the birds and the bugs resent that as much as we would? If these scientists successfully classify every species, but leave Homo Sapiens intact, what does that say about the objectivity of science? But if they split humanity into many parts, they risk alienating everyone and dooming their work to obscurity.
How does everyone else feel about the possible classification of humanity into separate species distinctions? I, personally, am against it, but are there any other arguments, for or against?
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
I'm waiting to get my project to catalog every functional program ever written by anyone additional funding.
I expect there to be at least 35 million new species of "Hello World!" that have yet to be discovered.
~D
What we call species are clusterings of genetically similar individuals. There are many examples in nature where 'species' A mates happily with B, B mates with C, C mates with D but D won't mate with A. Normative species can actually be quite a harmful conceptual shackle. I believe that there is a 1977 endangered species act in the United States that protects members of 'endangered species' but doesn't protect hybridised members of two 'endangered species'. And similarly some activists get up in arms when Australian dingos or Ethipian wolves start interbreeding with domestic dogs. It's as if they want to keep nature in some taxonomic apartheid.
Your judeo-cristian epistimology is really broken. The god described in the bible's old testament (where you got the quote about us having dominion), is a being independent from and yet creator of the universe. This, by definition, describes a being that will not interfere with creation which is seperate from it even if it wanted to. Intereference with its own creation in the sense of intercession, like saving the Dodo, would mean that there is no longer any relation, but merely that we and it are one and the same being and creation. There would be no point in intercession then.
Put another way:
The having dominion means exactly as you say: we are free to contaminate our beds until we suffocate in our own stink. You are either part of the problem or part of the solution. God won't help you / me. That would make god's creation pointless. So get with the program.
proposed that we start an emergency "grab and freeze" sampling program to insure biodiversity: we can unfreeze later, but now is the time to get as many species as possible through the current "die back".
grammatical skills? "grammar skills" would have been the correct syntax. Please refain from trying to sound smart when in fact you are merely a novice.
Who did Noah have sex with? Can 2 of every animal re-populate the world, or would their offspring be retarded? I read that adam and eve could not have populated the world for this reason. What about all the land plants that would have died, and Where did the dove get the olive branch? The land would have been over salted and no plants would grow, and there would be evidence of a flood. What about all the fresh water fish?
Need I go on?
Jesus f'ing christ. This is old news. I saw it on National Geographic Today over three weeks ago.
Come on dude!
For example, the discovery of Santa's flying reindeer would be a big step on the road to understanding the physics of his journey, akin in chemistry to discovering the transuranic series, and would have much more impact than finding yet another sign of a stressed creator. For example, the CIA would be absolutely fascinated to get a handle one someone who ``knows when you've been naughty''.
``But seriously folks,'' add to this the 250,000+ species known from fossils and it should be clear that at least every 8th-to-80th transitional form should have shown up in the fossil record we've exhumed so far (BTW, the above ref cites TL Erwin in The Tropical Forest Canopy within Biodiversity, 1988, NAP (WA DC) for a generous ceiling of 30 million species, mostly insects). If we had equal parts transitional and stable species (really, we need many times that because most attempted changes would fail according to any reasonable theory), for example, there should be an absolute scratching minimum of about 2,000 known transitional species discovered in the fossil record by now.
While we're having fun, take DM Raup's figure of 99.9% ( Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck? , 1991, WW Norton NY - see this too for commentary and a ceiling of 40M species) extinct species, there should be at least 20 transitional species alive today, and using the 10-30 million species range vs 2 million known, we should have found somewhere between 1 and 4 of those by now.
Maybe one of those is Santa's reindeer? Which, BTW, are probably female...
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
They even have a new logo!
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
True, in these widely divergent cases, but what else shall we exterminate?
Lions? [Y/n]
Sharks? [Y/n]
Dolphins? [Y/n]
Where do you draw the line? And yes, dolphins do kill people, in some places more people than sharks.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Two lifes forms belong to the same species if they are inter-capable of being fertilized. It is as simple as that. :-)
If you don't believe me, try with your St. Bernard
Humans belong to : Triblastic, vertebrae, mamal, hominidae, sapiens, sapiensis, species.
The last species says we are alone in our branch of hominidae, this differs from your example, as there are races (sub-class) of dogs, there is no sub-class of human being, but I strong believe that you known it before, right ?
"Shut up! Shut up shut up. Shut the fuck up. No one cares what the ratio is or how much you know about gators and chemistry. Shut up."
Shut up! Shut up shut up. Shut the fuck up. No one cares if you don't care about what the ratio is or how much you know about gators or chemistry. Shut up. You're not being forced to read it. Whiney bitch.
There are no different species of human beens.
Idiot.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It is a sorry spectacle.
Go and read some biology for goodness sake. When you look at Asian, White or Black people you are looking at varioations of the same fucking animal.
How difficult is to understand that?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Humans can't be classified in different species simply because humans are just one species.
The differences we appreciate are small adaptations to local conditions of the same animal.
Had somehow different groups of humans been isolated from each other for long enough periods of time it may have happened that different species of humanoid creatures would have emerged (as perhaps it happened during the early evolution of the human species).
The reality is that it did not happened and that all human beens belong to one species only.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I disagree. Software schedule estimates are generally extremely precise.
This doesn't negate the fact that they are invariably dead wrong, of course.
A friend of mine who studies biology was telling me about a bar in austria that has a unique organism that lives on its bar.
He was quite happy about this
D.A.K.D.A.E.---- Deny all Knowledge, Destroy All Evidence
One species, a-hah-ha-ha!
Two species, a-hah-ha-ha!
Three, three species!