How many species are there on earth

Species heading faster to poles. The economic benefits of nature. Nature target 'will not be met'. Biodiversity: Out of sight, out of mind. Science intends to tag all life. The black-capped woodnymph of Colombia was identified as recently as Now, it appears, we can. Linnaean steps. Muddied waters. The rate of species discovery has remained about even ever since Haeckel compiled his Kunstformen der Natur Art Forms of Nature a century ago.

Published 21 August The latest biodiversity estimate, based on a new method of prediction, dramatically narrows the range of 'best guesses', which was previously between 3 million and million.

Camilo Mora, a marine ecologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and his colleagues at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, have identified a consistent scaling pattern among the different levels of the taxonomic classification system order, genus, species and so on that allows the total number of species to be predicted.

The research is published in PLoS Biology 1 today. Mora argues that knowing how many species there are on Earth is one of the most important questions in science. He also highlights the practical significance: "Without this knowledge, we cannot even begin to answer questions such as how much diversity we can lose while still maintaining the ecosystem services that humanity depends upon. But the unstinting efforts of field taxonomists are not going to provide the number any time soon.

In the more than years since Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus began the science of taxonomy, 1. At this pace, May estimates that it will take another years to complete the job of recording all species. Instead, scientists have tried to predict the total number of species from the number already known. Some of the estimates amount to little more than educated guesses. Other approaches use assumptions that he describes as "unreliable and easy to break". Mora's method is based on an analysis of the taxonomic classification for all 1.

Linnaeus's system forms a pyramid-like hierarchy — the lower the category, the more entities it contains. There are more species than genera, more genera than families, more families than orders and so on, right up to the top level, domain. Mora and his colleagues show that a consistent numerical trend links the numbers in each category, and that this can be used to predict how many entities there should be in poorly catalogued levels, such as species, from the numbers in higher levels that are much more comprehensively described.

However, the method does not work for prokaryotes bacteria and archaea because the higher taxonomic levels are not well catalogued as is the case for eukaryotes. A conservative 'lower bound' estimate of about 10, prokaryotes is included in Mora's total but, in reality, they are likely to number in the millions. The analysis also reveals that some groups are much better known than others. May is impressed. Not only is it imaginative and novel, but the number it comes up with is within the range of my own best estimate!

Endemic species are those that naturally occur in only one geographical locations. In other words, they are unique to that place.

What we see is that the tropics is incredibly dense in unique wildlife. In almost every map we see a bright belt along the equator — this is true of mammals, birds, coral reefs, amphibians and a range of fish species.

If we want to protect these species we need to first understand where they live; what the pressures are; and what we can do about it.

Explore the diversity of wildlife across the planet — how many species are in each group, and where they live. See how wild mammal populations have changed over time; where they live today; and where they are threatened with extinction. Explore the diversity of birds across the world; how many species have gone extinct; and how populations are changing. Explore the distribution of coral reefs across the world and how they are changing from human pressures.

The Living Planet Index is one of the most-common biodiversity metrics. Hunting is one of the largest threats to wildlife. See how poaching rates and trade has changed over time, and across species. See how human expansion and habitat loss has changed landscapes over millennia, and how this has impacted global biodiversity.

The animal kingdom makes up just 0. Humans account for just 0. However, our livestock outweighs wild mammals and birds ten-fold. We have identified and described over two million species on Earth. Estimates on the true number of species varies.

The most widely-cited estimate is 8. The tropics are home to the most diverse and unique ecosystems. They tend to have the most endemic species. Biodiversity on Earth today. What are the stand-out points? Livestock outweighs wild mammals and birds ten-fold. How many species have we described? Click to open interactive version.

How many species are there really? Kingdom Number of species Total Number of species Ocean Number of species Terrestrial Animals 7,, 2,, 5,, Chromists 27, 20, Fungi , , Plants , 16, , Protozoa 36, 36, 0 Archaea 1 Bacteria Total species 8,, 2,, 6,,