New Estimate Suggests 5.5M Species On Earth, Not 30-100M

An anonymous reader writes "How many species share our planet? According to a recalculation by an international research team, the number is significantly lower than we thought — only around 5.5 million."

Comments

Well yeah, now...

[MarbleMunkey]

after we've killed off a bunch of them.

Re:Well yeah, now...

[TheRaven64]

Not really. Once a species dies out completely, it's failed at evolution. Killing off a significant proportion of a population periodically, however, causes the traits of the survivors to be selected for. An example of this is immunity to rat poison. Rats have a very high mutation rate (a huge number of them die of cancer as a result), and so it's likely that a very small proportion of the population will be immune to any given poison that you can use. After a few days, you've killed off all of the local population except the immune ones. After a few weeks, the survivors have passed on their immunity to their offspring, and a couple of months later you have the same number of rats but none are immune. In contrast, if you kill them all with fire (which they are very unlikely to be immune to) then none will survive to the next generation so the local population dies completely.

Re:Well yeah, now...

[wastedlife]

I'll bite. Stop anthropomorphizing evolution. Evolution does not care if it is the right thing to grow a second head or kill off the only food source. Evolution is a theory used to explain how organisms change with successive generations. That is all. It should not be used to moralize our actions. That is how things like eugenics get proposed. Going by your logic, because many people adhere to astronomy theories, we should not attempt to intercede if we detect a large comet on a collision course with Earth or the Moon.

Re:Well yeah, now...

[g4b]

I, as a strong believer in God, have to agree completely with what you just said.

Let me tell about my side of the story...

I do believe, that nature is intelligently designed ;) , but I do not agree with Intelligent Design, so do I not with Creationism.
There is a part of the teaching about micro- and macroevolution (evolution inbetween species and from species to species), which I do like as a thought - there is also no hard proof of species converting to other either - but I do believe MacroEv in the long run to be possible, maybe even wanted or happening.

As I have researched back then in historical background, evolution, as many other theories, came out of scientific university background, and was used in media to bash christian beliefs (I think it was english media, a face off between some clergy guy and a professor). From there on, the normal cycle of historical developments, where science changed the view of deists and atheists at the same amount over time (mostly by some sacrifices of christian scientists facing christian clergy), did not take it's usual path. It became something which was a direct attack on God, and was used as such. Same goes for the Big Bang, which in theory still does not proof God not existing. Christians started to defend themselves using non scientific explanations or pseudo science to keep their face in the last century, forgetting, that also christians fought to have a separation, freedom of faith and so on.

It feels like, believers tried to create a chisma between science and religion and now we have to pay for it by being attacked from those we wanted to liberate. Because not all christians did or do support religious viewpoints.

Universities in itself, as also many other aspects of our humanist culture, is something, a Christian would have fought for, especially from the early churches, but I think especially our main figure in the bible would have. Many scientists before this event were strong believers. But nowadays they are silent, silent because their scientific work would not been taken seriously if they admitted they are christians, and sometimes troubled in faith, because fundamentalists question their faith - they are attacked from both worlds.

It is hard to know, who really is at fault, populistic science, or religious fundamentalists, and who fired the first shot - I think it could be the christians on the other side. But one thing is clear: this war is not needed. Universities were not the temples of Atheism, as many christians nowadays see them. Knowledge was a virtue, it could be a calling from God, some books in the bible were written by "scientific" people back in the days of Luke (Genealogy was for example the begin of a historic text) and many Universities were founded by liberal thinking christians.

I do have experience. If I say, I do believe in God, I am regarded as somebody who might not really understand science (well I would never say, I know very much). It's a hard life in universities, and certainly did affect my life in general, in both studies - medicine and computer science. As if my personal belief in a God would not make me somebody who wants to find out what's out there, how things work and so on.

Since I was an atheist for a good period of my life, and did ask myself, how God can exist if evolution is proposed, I do understand, that it is seen as a contrast to the bible, it does trouble people seeking a faith.
Reading first chapter genesis and realising it's completely different aspect on creation as later in the book, seeing that even the timeline matches, and that it is only one chapter of a book afterwards going in a completely different direction, it made me realise, it's just a populistic hategame and talk-a-lot all around the world, like there is racism, and it should not stand in the way to only read, what that book has to say to me - or not. So I did continue. Many questions ahead. Still quite sceptical. Love Gen1,1 though.

I do enjoy the company of atheistic

Depending on where you start

[decipher_saint]

Each more delicious than the last!

Hmm... maybe I should have had breakfast this morning...

Re:from the depends-how-you-count dept

[publiclurker]

Please turn in your geek badge at the door. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_code

Reading comprehension fail

[Comboman]

From the article:

[The new estimate] takes into account plants and animals but, like previous studies, it excludes bacteria ...

They did not "remove a whole group". The previous estimates of 30 to 100 million species also did not include bacteria.

Re:from the depends-how-you-count dept

[impaledsunset]

There are 10 kinds of people: Those who understand Gray code, those who don't, and those who mistake it for binary.