Global biodiversity

Short description: Total variability of Earth's life forms

Examples of the multicellular biodiversity of the Earth.

Global biodiversity is the measure of biodiversity on planet Earth and is defined as the total variability of life forms. More than 99 percent of all species[1] that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct.[2][3] Estimates on the number of Earth's current species range from 2 million to 1 trillion, but most estimates are around 11 million species or fewer.[4] About 1.74 million species were databased as of 2018,[5] and over 80 percent have not yet been described.[6] The total amount of DNA base pairs on Earth, as a possible approximation of global biodiversity, is estimated at 5.0 x 1037, and weighs 50 billion tonnes.[7] In comparison, the total mass of the biosphere has been estimated to be as much as 4 TtC (trillion tons of carbon).[8]

In other related studies, around 1.9 million extant species are believed to have been described currently,[9] but some scientists believe 20% are synonyms, reducing the total valid described species to 1.5 million. In 2013, a study published in Science estimated there to be 5 ± 3 million extant species on Earth although that is disputed.[10] Another study, published in 2011 by PLoS Biology, estimated there to be 8.7 million ± 1.3 million eukaryotic species on Earth.[11] Some 250,000 valid fossil species have been described, but this is believed to be a small proportion of all species that have ever lived.[12]

Global biodiversity is affected by extinction and speciation. The background extinction rate varies among taxa but it is estimated that there is approximately one extinction per million species years. Mammal species, for example, typically persist for 1 million years. Biodiversity has grown and shrunk in earth's past due to (presumably) abiotic factors such as extinction events caused by geologically rapid changes in climate. Climate change 299 million years ago was one such event. A cooling and drying resulted in catastrophic rainforest collapse and subsequently a great loss of diversity, especially of amphibians.[13]

## Contents

* 1 Drivers that affect biodiversity and help animals to resource energy
* 2 Measuring diversity
* 3 Known species
* 4 Estimates of total number of species
* 4.1 Indices
* 5 Importance of biodiversity
* 6 Biodiversity loss
* 7 See also
* 8 References
* 9 External links

## Drivers that affect biodiversity and help animals to resource energy

Habitat change (see: habitat fragmentation or habitat destruction) is the most important driver currently affecting biodiversity, as some 40% of forests and ice-free habitats have been converted to cropland or pasture.[14] Other drivers are overexploitation, pollution, invasive species, and climate change.[citation needed]

## Measuring diversity

Biodiversity is usually plotted as the richness of a geographic area, with some reference to a temporal scale. Types of biodiversity include taxonomic or species, ecological, morphological, and genetic diversity. Taxonomic diversity, that is the number of species, genera, family is the most commonly assessed type.[15] A few studies have attempted to quantitatively clarify the relationship between different types of diversity. For example, the biologist Sarda Sahney has found a close link between vertebrate taxonomic and ecological diversity.[16]

## Known species

Insects make up the vast majority of animal species.[17]

Chapman, 2005 and 2009[9] has attempted to compile perhaps the most comprehensive recent statistics on numbers of extant species, drawing on a range of published and unpublished sources, and has come up with a figure of approximately 1.9 million estimated described taxa, as against possibly a total of between 11 and 12 million anticipated species overall (described plus undescribed), though other reported values for the latter vary widely. It is important to note that in many cases, the values given for "Described" species are an estimate only (sometimes a mean of reported figures in the literature) since for many of the larger groups in particular, comprehensive lists of valid species names do not currently exist. For fossil species, exact or even approximate numbers are harder to find; Raup, 1986[18] includes data based on a compilation of 250,000 fossil species so the true number is undoubtedly somewhat higher than this. It should also be noted that the number of described species is increasing by around 18,000–19,000 extant, and approaching 2,000 fossil species each year, as of 2012.[19][20][21] The number of published species names is higher than the number of described species, sometimes considerably so, on account of the publication, through time, of multiple names (synonyms) for the same accepted taxon in many cases.

Based on Chapman's (2009) report,[9] the estimated numbers of described extant species as of 2009 can be broken down as follows:

Major/Component group | Described | Global estimate (described + undescribed)

|
|

Chordates | 64,788 | ~80,500
↳ | Mammals | 5,487 | ~5,500
↳ | Birds | 9,990 | >10,000
↳ | Reptiles | 8,734 | ~10,000
↳ | Amphibia | 6,515 | ~15,000
↳ | Fishes | 31,153 | ~40,000
↳ | Agnatha | 116 | unknown
↳ | Cephalochordata | 33 | unknown
↳ | Tunicata | 2,760 | unknown
Invertebrates | ~1,359,365 | ~6,755,830
↳ | Hemichordata | 108 | ~110
↳ | Echinodermata | 7,003 | ~14,000
↳ | Insecta | ~1,000,000 (965,431–1,015,897) | ~5,000,000
| ↳ | Archaeognatha | 470 |
| ↳ | Blattodea | 3,684–4,000 |
| ↳ | Coleoptera | 360,000–~400,000 | 1,100,000
| ↳ | Dermaptera | 1,816 |
| ↳ | Diptera | 152,956 | 240,000
| ↳ | Embioptera | 200–300 | 2,000
| ↳ | Ephemeroptera | 2,500–<3,000 |
| ↳ | Hemiptera | 80,000–88,000 |
| ↳ | Hymenoptera | 115,000 | >~1,000,000[22]
| ↳ | Isoptera | 2,600–2,800 | 4,000
| ↳ | Lepidoptera | 174,250 | 300,000–500,000
| ↳ | Mantodea | 2,200 |
| ↳ | Mecoptera | 481 |
| ↳ | Megaloptera | 250–300 |
| ↳ | Neuroptera | ~5,000 |
| ↳ | Notoptera | 55 |
| ↳ | Odonata | 6,500 |
| ↳ | Orthoptera | 24,380 |
| ↳ | Phasmatodea (Phasmida) | 2,500–3,300 |
| ↳ | Phthiraptera | >3,000–~3,200 |
| ↳ | Plecoptera | 2,274 |
| ↳ | Psocoptera | 3,200–~3,500 |
| ↳ | Siphonaptera | 2,525 |
| ↳ | Strepsiptera | 596 |
| ↳ | Thysanoptera | ~6,000 |
| ↳ | Trichoptera | 12,627 |
| ↳ | Zoraptera | 28 |
| ↳ | Zygentoma (Thysanura) | 370 |
↳ | Arachnida | 102,248 | ~600,000
↳ | Pycnogonida | 1,340 | unknown
↳ | Myriapoda | 16,072 | ~90,000
↳ | Crustacea | 47,000 | 150,000
↳ | Onychophora | 165 | ~220
↳ | non-Insect Hexapoda | 9,048 | 52,000
↳ | Mollusca | ~85,000 | ~200,000
↳ | Annelida | 16,763 | ~30,000
↳ | Nematoda | <25,000 | ~500,000
↳ | Acanthocephala | 1,150 | ~1,500
↳ | Platyhelminthes | 20,000 | ~80,000
↳ | Cnidaria | 9,795 | unknown
↳ | Porifera | ~6,000 | ~18,000
↳ | Other Invertebrates | 12,673 | ~20,000
| ↳ | Placozoa | 1 | \-
| ↳ | Monoblastozoa | 1 | \-
| ↳ | Mesozoa (Rhombozoa, Orthonectida) | 106 | \-
| ↳ | Ctenophora | 166 | 200
| ↳ | Nemertea (Nemertina) | 1,200 | 5,000–10,000
| ↳ | Rotifera | 2,180 | \-
| ↳ | Gastrotricha | 400 | \-
| ↳ | Kinorhyncha | 130 | \-
| ↳ | Nematomorpha | 331 | ~2,000
| ↳ | Entoprocta (Kamptozoa) | 170 | 170
| ↳ | Gnathostomulida | 97 | \-
| ↳ | Priapulida | 16 | \-
| ↳ | Loricifera | 28 | >100
| ↳ | Cycliophora | 1 | \-
| ↳ | Sipuncula | 144 | \-
| ↳ | Echiura | 176 | \-
| ↳ | Tardigrada | 1,045 | \-
| ↳ | Phoronida | 10 | \-
| ↳ | Ectoprocta (Bryozoa) | 5,700 | ~5,000
| ↳ | Brachiopoda | 550 | \-
| ↳ | Pentastomida | 100 | \-
| ↳ | Chaetognatha | 121 | \-
Plants sens. lat. | ~310,129 | ~390,800
↳ | Bryophyta | 16,236 | ~22,750
| ↳ | Liverworts | ~5,000 | ~7,500
| ↳ | Hornworts | 236 | ~250
| ↳ | Mosses | ~11,000 | ~15,000
↳ | Algae (Plant) | 12,272 | unknown
| ↳ | Charophyta | 2,125 | \-
| ↳ | Chlorophyta | 4,045 | \-
| ↳ | Glaucophyta | 5 | \-
| ↳ | Rhodophyta | 6,097 | \-
↳ | Vascular Plants | 281,621 | ~368,050
| ↳ | Ferns and allies | ~12,000 | ~15,000
| ↳ | Gymnosperms | ~1,021 | ~1,050
| ↳ | Magnoliophyta | ~268,600 | ~352,000
Fungi | 98,998 (incl. Lichens 17,000) | 1,500,000 (incl. Lichens ~25,000)
Others | ~66,307 | ~2,600,500
↳ | Chromista [incl. brown algae, diatoms and other groups] | 25,044 | ~200,500
↳ | Protoctista [i.e. residual protist groups] | ~28,871 | >1,000,000
↳ | Prokaryota [ Bacteria and Archaea, excl. Cyanophyta] | 7,643 | ~1,000,000
↳ | Cyanophyta | 2,664 | unknown
↳ | Viruses | 2,085 | 400,000
Total (2009 data) | 1,899,587 | ~11,327,630

The distribution of numbers of known and undescribed (estimated) species on Earth, grouped by major taxonomic groups; according to Chapman 2009. Absolute number of species on the left (orange = estimated number of yet to be described species, blue = already described). Right: percentage of species already described (green) and estimated to be not yet known (yellow).

## Estimates of total number of species

However the total number of species for some taxa may be much higher.

* 10–30 million insects;[23]
* 5–10 million bacteria;[24]
* 1.5 million fungi;[25]
* ~1 million mites[26]
* ~1 million protists[27][28]

In 1982, Terry Erwin published an estimate of global species richness of 30 million, by extrapolating from the numbers of beetles found in a species of tropical tree. In one species of tree, Erwin identified 1200 beetle species, of which he estimated 163 were found only in that type of tree.[29] Given the 50,000 described tropical tree species, Erwin suggested that there are almost 10 million beetle species in the tropics.[30] In 2011 a study published in PLoS Biology estimated there to be 8.7 million ± 1.3 million eukaryotic species on Earth.[11]

By 2017, most estimates projected there to be around 11 million species or fewer on Earth.[4] A 2017 study estimated there are around at least 1 to 6 billion species, 70-90% of which are bacteria.[4] A May 2016 study based on scaling laws estimated that 1 trillion species (overwhelmingly microbes) are on Earth currently with only one-thousandth of one percent described,[31][32] though this has been controversial and a 2019 study of varied environmental samples of 16S ribosomal RNA estimated that there exist 0.8-1.6 million species of prokaryotes.[33]

### Indices

After the Convention on Biological Diversity was signed in 1992, biological conservation became a priority for the international community. There are several indicators used that describe trends in global biodiversity. However, there is no single indicator for all extant species as not all have been described and measured over time. There are different ways to measure changes in biodiversity. The Living Planet Index (LPI) is a population-based indicator that combines data from individual populations of many vertebrate species to create a single index.[34] The Global LPI for 2012 decreased by 28%. There are also indices that separate temperate and tropical species for marine and terrestrial species. The Red List Index is based on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and measures changes in conservation status over time and currently includes taxa that have been completely categorized: mammals, birds, amphibians and corals.[35] The Global Wild Bird Index is another indicator that shows trends in population of wild bird groups on a regional scale from data collected in formal surveys.[36] Challenges to these indices due to data availability are taxonomic gaps and the length of time of each index.

The Biodiversity Indicators Partnership was established in 2006 to assist biodiversity indicator development, advancement and to increase the availability of indicators.

## Importance of biodiversity

Biodiversity is important for humans through ecosystem services and goods. Ecosystem services are broken down into: regulating services such as air and water purification, provisioning services (goods), such as fuel and food, cultural services and supporting services such as pollination and nutrient cycling.[37]

## Biodiversity loss

This section is an excerpt from biodiversity loss[ edit ]

## See also

* Global Species Database

## References

1. ↑ McKinney, Michael L. (6 December 2012). "How do rare species avoid extinction? A paleontological view" (in en). The Biology of Rarity: Causes and consequences of rare—common differences. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 110. ISBN 978-94-011-5874-9. https://books.google.com/books?id=4LHnCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA110.
2. ↑ Stearns, Beverly Peterson; Stearns, Stephen C. (1999) (in en). Watching, from the Edge of Extinction. Yale University Press. p. x. ISBN 978-0-300-08469-6. https://books.google.com/books?id=0BHeC-tXIB4C&pg=PA1921.
3. ↑ Novacek, Michael J. (8 November 2014). "Prehistory's Brilliant Future". The New York Times (New York). ISSN 0362-4331. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/opinion/sunday/prehistorys-brilliant-future.html. Retrieved 2014-12-25.
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Larsen, Brendan B.; Miller, Elizabeth C.; Rhodes, Matthew K.; Wiens, John J. (September 2017). "Inordinate Fondness Multiplied and Redistributed: the Number of Species on Earth and the New Pie of Life" (in en). The Quarterly Review of Biology 92 (3): 229–265. doi:10.1086/693564. ISSN 0033-5770. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/693564. Retrieved 6 August 2023.
5. ↑ "Catalogue of Life: 2018 Annual Checklist". 2018. http://www.catalogueoflife.org/annual-checklist/2018/info/ac. Retrieved 2018-08-20.
6. ↑ Mora, Camilo; Tittensor, Derek P.; Adl, Sina et al. (23 August 2011). "How Many Species Are There on Earth and in the Ocean?". PLOS Biology (San Francisco, CA: PLOS) 9 (8): e1001127. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001127. ISSN 1545-7885. PMID 21886479.
7. ↑ Nuwer, Rachel (18 July 2015). "Counting All the DNA on Earth". The New York Times (New York). ISSN 0362-4331. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/21/science/counting-all-the-dna-on-earth.html. Retrieved 2015-07-18.
8. ↑ "The Biosphere: Diversity of Life". Aspen Global Change Institute. Basalt, CO. http://www.agci.org/classroom/biosphere/index.php. Retrieved 2015-07-19.
9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Chapman, A. D. (2009) (PDF). Numbers of Living Species in Australia and the World (2nd ed.). Canberra: Australian Biological Resources Study. pp. 1–80. ISBN 978-0-642-56861-8. http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/abrs/publications/other/species-numbers/2009/index.html.
10. ↑ Costello, Mark; Robert May; Nigel Stork (25 January 2013). "Can we name Earth's species before they go extinct?". Science 339 (6118): 413–416. doi:10.1126/science.1230318. PMID 23349283. Bibcode: 2013Sci...339..413C.
11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Sweetlove, Lee (2011). "Number of species on Earth tagged at 8.7 million". Nature (Macmillan Publishers Limited). doi:10.1038/news.2011.498. http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110823/full/news.2011.498.html. Retrieved 18 July 2014.
12. ↑ Donald R. Prothero (2013), Bringing Fossils to Life: An Introduction to Paleobiology (3rd ed.), Columbia University Press, pp. 21
13. ↑ Sahney, S.; Benton, M.J.; Falcon-Lang, H.J. (2010). "Rainforest collapse triggered Pennsylvanian tetrapod diversification in Euramerica". Geology 38 (12): 1079–1082. doi:10.1130/G31182.1. Bibcode: 2010Geo....38.1079S.
14. ↑ Pereira, HM (2012). "Global Biodiversity Change: The Bad, the Good, and the Unknown". Annual Review of Environment and Resources 37: 25–50. doi:10.1146/annurev-environ-042911-093511.
15. ↑ Sahney, S.; Benton, M.J. (2008). "Recovery from the most profound mass extinction of all time". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 275 (1636): 759–65. doi:10.1098/rspb.2007.1370. PMID 18198148.
16. ↑ Sahney, S.; Benton, M.J.; Ferry, P.A. (2010). "Links between global taxonomic diversity, ecological diversity and the expansion of vertebrates on land". Biology Letters 6 (4): 544–547. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2009.1024. PMID 20106856.
17. ↑ Bautista, L.M.; Pantoja, J.C. (2005). "What animal species should we study next?". Bulletin of the British Ecological Society 36 (4): 27–28. https://digital.csic.es/bitstream/10261/43928/5/Bautista_BullBES36_p27_2005.pdf.
18. ↑ Raup. D.M. (1986). "Biological extinction in earth history". Science 231 (4745): 1528–1533. doi:10.1126/science.11542058. PMID 11542058. Bibcode: 1986Sci...231.1528R.
19. ↑ IISE (2010) (PDF). SOS 2009: State of Observed Species. Arizona State University: International Institute for Species Exploration. pp. 1–8. http://species.asu.edu/SOS_2009. Retrieved 2013-09-16.
20. ↑ IISE (2011) (PDF). SOS 2010: State of Observed Species. Arizona State University: International Institute for Species Exploration. pp. 1–10. http://species.asu.edu/SOS_2010. Retrieved 2013-09-16.
21. ↑ IISE (2012) (PDF). SOS 2011: State of Observed Species. Arizona State University: International Institute for Species Exploration. pp. 1–14. http://species.asu.edu/SOS_2011. [yes|permanent dead link|dead link}}]
22. ↑ "Quantifying the unquantifiable: why Hymenoptera, not Coleoptera, is the most speciose animal order". BMC Ecology 18. 2018. doi:10.1186/s12898-018-0176-x.
23. ↑ "Numbers of Insects (Species and Individuals)". 1996. http://www.si.edu/Encyclopedia_SI/nmnh/buginfo/bugnos.htm.
24. ↑ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Census of Marine Life (CoML) BBC News
25. ↑ David L. Hawksworth, "The magnitude of fungal diversity: the 1•5 million species estimate revisited" Mycological Research (2001), 105: 1422-1432 Cambridge University Press Abstract
26. ↑ "Acari at University of Michigan Museum of Zoology Web Page". http://insects.ummz.lsa.umich.edu/ACARI/index.html.
27. ↑ Pawlowski, J. et al. (2012). CBOL Protist Working Group: Barcoding Eukaryotic Richness beyond the Animal, Plant, and Fungal Kingdoms. PLoS Biol 10(11): e1001419. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001419, [1].
28. ↑ Adl, S. M. et al. (2007). Diversity, nomenclature, and taxonomy of protists. Systematic Biology 56(4), 684-689, [2].
29. ↑ Erwin, Terry L. (March 1982). The Coleopterists Society. ed. "Tropical Forests: Their Richness in Coleoptera and Other Arthropod Species". The Coleopterists Bulletin 36 (1): 74–75. ISSN 0010-065X.
30. ↑ Pullin, Andrew (2002). Conservation Biology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521644822. http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/life-sciences/ecology-and-conservation/conservation-biology. Retrieved December 24, 2013.
31. ↑ "Researchers find that Earth may be home to 1 trillion species". NSF. 2 May 2016. https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=138446&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
32. ↑ Locey, Lennon (2016). "Scaling laws predict global microbial diversity". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 113 (21): 5970–5975. doi:10.1073/pnas.1521291113. PMID 27140646. Bibcode: 2016PNAS..113.5970L.
33. ↑ Louca, Stilianos; Mazel, Florent; Doebeli, Michael; Parfrey, Laura Wegener (4 February 2019). "A census-based estimate of Earth's bacterial and archaeal diversity" (in en). PLOS Biology 17 (2): e3000106. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.3000106. ISSN 1545-7885. PMID 30716065.
34. ↑ "Indicators and Assessments Unit". Zoological Society of London. http://www.zsl.org/science/research-projects/indicators-assessments/index,134,ZI.html.
35. ↑ "Trends in the status of biodiversity". IUCN. http://www.iucnredlist.org/about/summary-statistics. Retrieved 25 November 2013.
36. ↑ "Global Wild Bird Index". Biodiversity Indicators Partnership. http://www.bipindicators.net/wbi.
37. ↑ De Groot, R.S. (2002). "A typology for the classification, and description and valuation of ecosystem functions, goods and services". Ecological Economics 41 (3): 393–408. doi:10.1016/s0921-8009(02)00089-7. http://rcin.org.pl/Content/53616.

## External links

* Biodiversity A-Z
* Wikispecies
* Biodiversity--Global issues

0.00

(0 votes)

Original source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global biodiversity. Read more

|

Retrieved from "https://handwiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Biology:Global_biodiversity&oldid=849044"