Estimates of Total Number of Species
However the total number of species for some taxa may be much higher.
- 10-30 million insects;
- 5-10 million bacteria;
- 1.5 million fungi;
- ~1 million mites
One early estimate by Terry Erwin put global species richness at 30 million, following extrapolations from the numbers of beetles found in a species of tropical tree. In one species of tree, Erwin identified 1200 species of beetle, of which he estimated 163 were found only in that tree. Based on the 50,000 species of tropical tree, this would suggest that there are almost 10 million species of beetle in the tropics.
Read more about this topic: Global Biodiversity
Famous quotes containing the words estimates, total, number and/or species:
“A State, in idea, is the opposite of a Church. A State regards classes, and not individuals; and it estimates classes, not by internal merit, but external accidents, as property, birth, etc. But a church does the reverse of this, and disregards all external accidents, and looks at men as individual persons, allowing no gradations of ranks, but such as greater or less wisdom, learning, and holiness ought to confer. A Church is, therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“The techniques of opening conversation are universal. I knew long ago and rediscovered that the best way to attract attention, help, and conversation is to be lost. A man who seeing his mother starving to death on a path kicks her in the stomach to clear the way, will cheerfully devote several hours of his time giving wrong directions to a total stranger who claims to be lost.”
—John Steinbeck (1902–1968)
“... is it not clear that to give to such women as desire it and can devote themselves to literary and scientific pursuits all the advantages enjoyed by men of the same class will lessen essentially the number of thoughtless, idle, vain and frivolous women and thus secure the [sic] society the services of those who now hang as dead weight?”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“Can it then be doubted, but that God, who is infinitely fine Spirit, and withal intelligent, can make and change all species and kind of body as he pleaseth? But I dare not say, that this is the way by which God Almighty worketh, because it is past my apprehension: yet it serves very well to demonstrate, that the omnipotence of God implieth no contradiction.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)