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600 New Species of Fish Discovered
zenobr writes "Some 300 scientists from 53 countries are creating a record of all known marine life, in a project reminiscent of an aquatic Domesday Book. So far more than 15,000 species of fish have been catalogued and 2 to 3 thousand more are expected to be catalogued before the project's end in 2010. Over 500 of the fish catalogued thus far are thought to be new to science. Full story on BBC News"
I wonder how many fish they thought to be extinct they'll find doing this . . .
Will I retire or break 10K?
Maybe they didn't mean Doomsday book. Maybe it should have been DOMESDAY book. The Domesday book was basically a census ordered by William the Conquerer about 20 years after the invasion.
You can find out more at:
http://www.domesdaybook.co.uk/
The Domesday Book was the complete account of the lands and people of the nation of England undertaken by William the Conqueror in 1085-86. It bears no resemblance to the science fiction novel cited in the link.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Tartar Sauce technology is just not keeping up! I'm going to sponsor open sauce recipies at SauceForge.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is not suficiently advanced.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
You gotta love a man who has to get a book made just to know what he owns.
They've got 150 more to taste. Reports so far include 300 taste like chicken, and a few mysterious 'Tasty Wheats' flavoured oddities.
Refuse to make a statement in your sig!
It's getting deep in here! This story just doesn't hold water and it won't scale (imagine a beo... nope, too corny even for me). By the time we see the tail end of this one, it'll smell pretty fishy. I think the data has been salted. Whoever believes this one is smoking a lot of sea weed, and personally I've had enough to make my head swim! I think this needs to be sent to a watery grave before the sharks catch the smell.
>> *shoots self for being so stupid*
Me first!!
It would be interesting to estimate the total number of species of fish based on the trajectory of species counts. The trajectory probably follows some x% of remaining species are discovered on a yearly basis. A bit of linear regression on a transform of the species counts by year and a bit of calculus should provide a reasonable extrapolation.
Of course a simple analytic model would probably not be accurate for a number of reasons. I am sure there are wastersheds that have not been adequately explored that harbor substantive numbers of unknown species (e.g., Burma). There's also the problem of duplicates. Then there are extinctions of both previously discovered and never-to-be discovered species.
I know, I know, there's probably several papers in the academic literature on this and I'm just too lazy to look them up. But its fun to think about.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Now we have a ton of new fish for O'Reilly to stipple and use for cover art!
Worldwide, in the last few years, I have seen several estimations on how many species wait to be discovered, prepared by various organizations of Taxonomists, Biologists, and such. These are always much larger than the general public expects. There are probably no more than a few large mammals, at very most, awaiting discovery, but there may be 100,000 species of insects not yet categorized, and there are probably a thousand types of birds, hundreds of frogs and thousands of amphibians and reptiles, and possibly as many as a dozen rodents. It's even been proposed that there are still over 50 large (not bacteria sized) parasites on humans that have never been entered into a textbook. Overall, we may know as little as 15% of all species, and it appears dead certain the best possible number is less than 1/2. I'm not going to document all this in detail, but sites such as www.bottomquark.com have a few archived articles for those wanting to check the deplorable situation in taxonomy out.
Who is John Cabal?
Actually, this isn't the case. Species are simply populations that *tend* not to breed together -- for example, dogs (Canis familiaris), wolves (Canis lupus) and coyotes (Canis latrans) can breed together just fine and produce viable offspring, but because matings are relatively rare, they are still counted as separate species.
Well, the first thing you have to learn about taxonomy is that stripes and dots don't count. Ever see the stripes and dots on a dinosaur? Neither has anyone else.
Form, not color. A rose by any other color is still a rose.
Taxonomically speaking the only difference between an Atlantic Salmon and a Rainbow Trout ( which has different colored dots and its famous red stripe) is. . . two teeth.
(Yes, for those taking notes, that means that the Rainbow Trout is really the Pacific Salmon and the "Pacific Salmon" aren't. The Brook Trout and the Lake Trout aren't trout or salmon. They're Char. That's what happens when you let the "people" name things before the taxonomists get there).
KFG