Slashdot Mirror
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."
"???? -> 1900 - 75 species extinct"
I believe that may be inaccurate.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
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
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).
You're thinking of various large gulls in the genus Larus - Herring, Western, Glaucous-winged etc.
One way taxonomists (in zoology at least) deal with this is by lumping the species into a container known as a "superspecies". Another way that taxonomists deal with the problem is to downgrade the species into subspecies lumped into a single species.
There's no hard and fast rule to follow here, if there were taxonomists would have nothing to argue about.
The gull situation you refer to is particularly complex.
Why is the situation so messy? Evolution. These closely-related species are largely isolated reproductively and have evolved recognizable differences, though there's free hybridization where they meet. In some cases (Western X Glaucous-winged in the Seattle, Washington area, for instance) hybridization is so widespread that at some point I'd expect them to be "lumped" into a single species.
Humans have a role here as gulls show up in large numbers in places where they may not have in the past (think about all those gulls you see around inland landfills). We may play a role in reducing the degree of reproductive isolation of some of these closely-related gulls and may impact their evolution, in other words.
There are specific ways to differentiate species. Generally if two sets of organisms can interbreed and produce offspring that can breed themselves, they are considered of the same species.
Example 1 : Cocker Spanial, golden retriever: can interbreed therefore same species.
Example 2: Donkey, horse, makes mule but mule is sterile therefore donkey and horse are different species.