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

Tony.Rees at csiro.au Tony.Rees at csiro.au
Tue Aug 3 18:24:19 CDT 2010 

Stephen writes:

> 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.

Agreed, this is what Catalogue of Life and PaleoDB are doing, in fact, only there is a way to go as yet. (Also Thomson Reuters Index to Organism Names, www.organismnames.com/<http://www.organismnames.com/> , which I should have mentioned as well in my original post).

So the real question in my mind is how best to advance the activities of these and similar operations until we do have an arguably complete "Catalogue of Life and Death" from which such statistics and taxon lists can be easily derived, as well as related information of use to all biology.

- Tony


________________________________
From: Stephen Thorpe [mailto:stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz]
Sent: Wednesday, 4 August 2010 8:00 AM
To: Jason Mate; Taxacom
Cc: Rees, Tony (CMAR, Hobart)
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] How far are we to completing a world genus/specieslisting for animals

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<mailto:stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
> To: Tony.Rees at csiro.au<mailto:Tony.Rees at csiro.au>; releech at telusplanet.net<mailto:releech at telusplanet.net>; joelhallan at hotmail.com<mailto:joelhallan at hotmail.com>; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu<mailto: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<mailto:Tony.Rees at csiro.au>" <Tony.Rees at csiro.au<mailto:Tony.Rees at csiro.au>>
> To: stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz<mailto:stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>; releech at telusplanet.net<mailto:releech at telusplanet.net>; joelhallan at hotmail.com<mailto:joelhallan at hotmail.com>;
> taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu<mailto: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<mailto:stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>]
> Sent: Tuesday, 3 August 2010 3:14 PM
> To: Rees, Tony (CMAR, Hobart); releech at telusplanet.net<mailto:releech at telusplanet.net>; joelhallan at hotmail.com<mailto:joelhallan at hotmail.com>;
> taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu<mailto: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<mailto:Tony.Rees at csiro.au>" <Tony.Rees at csiro.au<mailto:Tony.Rees at csiro.au>>
> To: releech at telusplanet.net<mailto:releech at telusplanet.net>; stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz<mailto:stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>; joelhallan at hotmail.com<mailto:joelhallan at hotmail.com>;
> taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu<mailto: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<mailto: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> [mailto:taxacom-
> > bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu<mailto: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<mailto: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<mailto:stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>>
> > To: "Joel Hallan" <joelhallan at hotmail.com<mailto:joelhallan at hotmail.com>>; <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu<mailto: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<mailto:joelhallan at hotmail.com>>
> > To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu<mailto: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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