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[Taxacom] How far are we to completing a world genus/specieslisting for animals

Stephen Thorpe stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz
Tue Aug 3 16:59:34 CDT 2010 

the Onychophora and its DNA species issue only affected a handful of N.Z. taxa 
described in 1998 by Trewick. In general, there is no particular issue relevant 
to the number of "accepted" named species in this group, as far as I know.

I was in a bit of a rush yesterday evening, but the main point I was trying to 
make is that guesstimates of the number of "accepted" named species of organisms 
are somewhat unconvincing until such time as we have set them all out in a 
meaningful way on Wikispecies or other suitable forum and counted them up. The 
implication of this is that we don't have a very good idea of how many are left 
to set out in this way until we start to find new ones to be few and far between 
...



________________________________
From: Jason Mate <jfmate at hotmail.com>
To: Taxacom <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Sent: Tue, 3 August, 2010 10:08:45 PM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] How far are we to completing a world genus/specieslisting 
for animals


It is not the best possible example. We have already talked about Onychophora 
and its DNA species. Maybe Onychophora would be a good test for ''Candidati''?

Jason 

> Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2010 22:30:24 -0700
> From: stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz
> To: Tony.Rees at csiro.au; releech at telusplanet.net; joelhallan at hotmail.com; 
>taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] How far are we to completing a world    
>genus/specieslisting for animals
> 
> OK, a quick look at a random small phylum (Onychophora, 
>http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/abrs/publications/other/species-numbers/2009/04-02-groups-invertebrates.html#onychophora)
>)
>  in Chapman, reveals a 70-200 World Described/
> Accepted species. This is an alarmingly wide range for such a small phylum!
> 
> In an amusingly circular turn of argument, many of Chapman's sources are from 
> Joel Hallan's Biology Catalogue!!
> 
> 
> 
> ________________________________
> From: "Tony.Rees at csiro.au" <Tony.Rees at csiro.au>
> To: stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz; releech at telusplanet.net; 
>joelhallan at hotmail.com; 
>
> taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Sent: Tue, 3 August, 2010 5:17:15 PM
> Subject: RE: [Taxacom] How far are we to completing a world 
>genus/specieslisting 
>
> for animals
> 
> 
> Stephen,
>  
> > A top down approach might be somewhat informative, e.g. find guesstimates for 
>
> >each of the animal phyla
> > (http://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Animalia), or their constituent classes, 
> >etc.,
>  
> If you take the trouble to read Chapman’s publication, which is available 
>online 
>
> at 
>http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/abrs/publications/other/species-numbers/2009/
>/
>  , you will find that is what he has done, using his choice of best available 
> sources, for the extant taxa at least., which is why I do not disagree with his 
>
> numbers.
>  
> Regards - Tony
>  
> 
> ________________________________
> 
> From:Stephen Thorpe [mailto:stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz] 
> Sent: Tuesday, 3 August 2010 3:14 PM
> To: Rees, Tony (CMAR, Hobart); releech at telusplanet.net; joelhallan at hotmail.com; 
>
> taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] How far are we to completing a world 
>genus/specieslisting 
>
> for animals
>  
> Guesstimates based on other guesstimates don't do a lot for me! 
>  
> A top down approach might be somewhat informative, e.g. find guesstimates for 
> each of the animal phyla (http://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Animalia), or their 
>
> constituent classes, etc., and add, but difficult to find good data on fossil 
> taxa in many cases
>  
> 
> ________________________________
> 
> From:"Tony.Rees at csiro.au" <Tony.Rees at csiro.au>
> To: releech at telusplanet.net; stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz; 
>joelhallan at hotmail.com; 
>
> taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Sent: Tue, 3 August, 2010 4:58:08 PM
> Subject: RE: [Taxacom] How far are we to completing a world 
>genus/specieslisting 
>
> for animals
> 
> Dear Joel, all,
> 
> Here is some of the logic I used to produce some "guesstimates" in answer to a 

> question of this type as posted on http://www.obis.org.au/irmng/irmng_faq/, in 

> the section "How complete is IRMNG at this time?"
> 
> Chapman, 2009 "Numbers if Living Species in Australia and the World", 2nd 
> edition gives a total estimate of 1,899,587 "world described/accepted" living 
> species (p.11), of which 1,424,153 are multicellular animals - let's say 1.9m 
> and 1.42m, respectively. Note that he does not claim to have or have seen all 
> these names, they are composites of published totals from many sources with a 
> degree of scrutiny and selectivity.
> 
> I believe there may be around 300k "good" named fossil species of both plants 
> and animals, also protists and bacteria in some cases, giving a total of 
>perhaps 
>
> 2.2m accepted species, living and fossil, across all kingdoms/domains.
> 
> Using a very rough guesstimate that there may be on average around 2 synonyms 
> for every accepted taxon at species level, that would suggest that there may be 
>
> in the order of 6.6-7m published names of which around 30-35% may be valid, not 
>
> including spelling errors, authority variants, and so on.
> 
> The current Catalogue of Life (2010) contains 1,257,735 notionally valid 
>species 
>
> together with an unstated number of synonyms, but I believe the latter is 
>around 
>
> 500,000. This would suggest that at species level, the CoL is approx. 66% 
> complete for valid, extant taxa but only perhaps 38% complete for all published 
>
> names, valid and non-valid, extant and fossil, animals and other 
> kingdoms/domains; and by definition, fossil names are not in scope for CoL at 
> this time, although at least some of the latter can be found in PaleoDB 
> (www.paleodb.org/), which currently advertises that it holds 169,874 taxon 
>names 
>
> for fossils at all ranks, including both valid and non-valid names, so possible 
>
> 20-25% of the "missing" fossil species names can be found there (Of course I am 
>
> happy to be corrected here if someone has better estimates).
> 
> uBio (www.ubio.org ) currently advertises as listing 11,106,374 names at all 
> ranks (also including vernacular names) but a number of these will be variants 

> of each other i.e. misspellings and variant cited authorities. The true number 

> of names included after the above variation is accounted for may be closer to 
> 4-5 million. Also uBio has a lot of infraspecies names which will inflate their 
>
> total too as compared with numbers of species alone. So maybe there are 2-3 
> million actual species names represented by the range of variants in the uBio 
> holdings. Obviously this is greater than the holdings of Cat. of Life but in 
>the 
>
> main these names have not received the same degree of expert scrutiny and also 

> are not arranged in any single, immediately useable taxonomic hierarchy.
> 
> The Global Names Index, GNI is basically a superset of uBio NameBank plus a 
> number of other sources and so is subject to similar considerations at this 
> time; quote from their site http://www.globalnames.org/ : "At this time GNI is 

> aware of 20 million namestrings for groups of organisms, most of which are 
>minor 
>
> spelling variants of other names."
> 
> At genus level my estimates are based on slightly different criteria, i.e. the 

> degree of completeness and overlap between various sources I am familiar with 
> including Nomenclator Zoologicus, Index Nominum Genericorum, List of Names with 
>
> Standing in Prokaryotic Nomenclature and more. From these considerations my 
>best 
>
> guess is currently that there are 470,000 published genus names for all groups, 
>
> living and fossil of which perhaps 200,000 are valid. In my IRMNG genus level 
> compilation I currently hold around 446,000 genus names (with an emphasis on 
> correct spellings) so this may be perhaps 95% complete at this time (or of 
> course a bit more or less) across all groups. I could subset this further by 
> group with a little effort if you wish. Of course all the IRMNG genus names are 
>
> not attributed exactly to family as yet (many are just to phylum or class as 
>per 
>
> Nomenclator Zoologicus in the first instance) and only a subset have been 
> checked for valid/synonym status, but it is a start.
> 
> I'd be interested to see how much of the above fits with others' perceptions in 
>
> this area.
> 
> Regards
> 
> Tony Rees
> Manager, Divisional Data Centre,
> CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research,
> GPO Box 1538 ,
> Hobart , Tasmania 7001, Australia
> Ph: 0362 325318 (Int: +61 362 325318)
> Fax: 0362 325000 (Int: +61 362 325000)
> Google Maps: http://maps.google.com.au/?ie=UTF8&ll=-42.88725,147.33777&z=18
> e-mail: Tony.Rees at csiro.au
> Manager, OBIS Australia regional node, http://www.obis.org.au/
> Biodiversity informatics research activities: 
> http://www.cmar.csiro.au/datacentre/biodiversity.htm
> Personal info: 
> http://www.fishbase.org/collaborators/collaboratorsummary.cfm?id=1566
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:taxacom-
> > bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Robin Leech
> > Sent: Tuesday, 3 August 2010 2:14 PM
> > To: Stephen Thorpe; Joel Hallan; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> > Subject: Re: [Taxacom] How far are we to completing a world
> > genus/specieslisting for animals
> > 
> > Well, it all depends on a few things.  If you believe that there are only
> > about
> > 4 million species, we are getting closer.  If you believe that there are
> > anywhere
> > from 30 million to over 100 million, then we have a long way to go to
> > complete
> > the world listing of genus/species.
> > 
> > Another point to keep in mind is that there have been extinctions at the
> > 95%
> > or
> > greater something like 5 times. So, if we have ONLY 30 million today, and
> > this total is what has mushroomed from the 5% remainder, and this has
> > happened 5 times, and figuring that previous species levels were at the 30
> > million level, then it looks like all the fossils will contribute - if we
> > can ever find
> > them - 120 million, and that the extant will contribute 30 million for a
> > total of
> > 150 million.
> > 
> > And, we have been creating our own fossils.  All those species we
> > collected
> > when
> > they were extant, and which we and other processes killed off are now
> > extinct,
> > are fossils, no?
> > 
> > So, we have a long, long way to go.
> > 
> > Robin
> > 
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Stephen Thorpe" <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
> > To: "Joel Hallan" <joelhallan at hotmail.com>; <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
> > Sent: Monday, August 02, 2010 9:58 PM
> > Subject: Re: [Taxacom] How far are we to completing a world
> > genus/specieslisting for animals
> > 
> > 
> > >How far are we to completing a world genus/species listing for animals?
> > 
> > 
> > An interesting question out of the blue!
> > 
> > Well, it can only ever be made up-to-date, of course, never "complete"
> > 
> > With so many more or less independent initiatives all working in parallel,
> > I
> > wonder who you mean by "we"?
> > 
> > I can only speak for Wikispecies, and even then I can only say that
> > progress
> > is
> > rapid, but I have no exact idea how far we are from up-to-date ...
> > 
> > why do you ask?
> > 
> > Stephen
> > 
> > 
> > ________________________________
> > From: Joel Hallan <joelhallan at hotmail.com>
> > To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> > Sent: Tue, 3 August, 2010 3:47:38 PM
> > Subject: [Taxacom] How far are we to completing a world genus/species
> > listing
> > for animals
> > 
> > 
> > How far are we to completing a world genus/species listing for animals?
> > 
> > Joel Hallan
> > Austin , Texas
> > _______________________________________________
> > 
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> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
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