[Taxacom] Costello-gate: PS

[Stephen Thorpe]

[p. 17, quote]?the continued high rate of species description, at about 18,000 species per year (Wheeler and Pennak 2010)[unquote]
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Thomson Reuters ION metrics for species (and subspecies) (http://www.organismnames.com/metrics.htm?page=graphs) show a current figure of around 17000 newly described per year. This doesn't include plants or fungi, but DOES include fossil taxa. Even then, the figure seems a bit high to me, but the argument of Costello et al. is then straightforwardly as follows:
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there are only 1 million more species left to describe (where they get this from, I don't know)
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with a modest increase to 20000 new species described per year, it will take 50 years to describe everything.
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and yet, I still think that not much will change in the next 50 years, at least not in N.Z., Australia, Africa, tropical Asia, or North America ...
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Stephen