

Only 14 percent of Earth's species have been discovered  - arocks
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/08/110824-earths-species-8-7-million-biology-planet-animals-science/

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ggchappell
A thought:

This summer, I gave myself the goal of photographing every kind of wildflower
in my area. It turned out to be quite a large project; I ended up with about
6000 images of perhaps 130 species.

When I started, I figured the big question I would be answering would be this:

\- Here is a plant; what species is it?

But as I progressed, I found myself confronted with the surprising difficulty
of answering a somewhat different question:

\- Here are two plants; are they the _same_ species?

This article suggests yet a third question:

\- Here is a plant; is it a _known_ species?

It is interesting to think that, for some of my 6000 images, the answer may
just be "no".

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hcack
Who has counted the remaining 86%?

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angdis
There are also techniques from "metagenomics" where environmental samples are
taken from ocean water captured in filters and dna-sequenced en-masse (see
"Global Ocean Sampling"). It is then possible to statistically infer the
number of distinct species by analyzing the sequence data.

This was first attempted in the Sargasso Sea which had been thought to be
relatively sparse in microbial diversity. Instead, it was found to have a
shocking number of entirely new microbial species.

The scary thing is not simply that species are going extinct, but that species
which we may never know of may go extinct in the near future.

~~~
swah
I'm trying to grasp what you mean by _scary_ in this context.

~~~
BasDirks
We destroy species before we have any knowledge of them. That's my
interpretation but I can see why you're asking it.

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swah
I was just thinking in the line of "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is
around to hear it, does it make a sound?".

Why should we feel bad if a species comes and goes without we ever knowing
about it? Isn't that expected and natural? Doesn't that happen all the time in
the universe?

~~~
angdis
Sure, it happens all the time and has happened since before humans existed.
The concern is about how much extinction humans are CAUSING. Given that
extinctions can impact entire ecosystems, we (as a species) should be worried
about the impact we're having on other species, if only for our own selfish
reasons.

The fact that there are species that we don't even know about means there is
still a lot to learn about life on Earth. It is generally a bad idea to
aggressively mess around with a system that is not well-understood, that is
what we're doing and this news items demonstrates how little we actually know
about our ecosystem.

~~~
ThaddeusQuay2
For our own selfish reasons, we should get better at designing and building
ecosystems, instead of expending resources on discovering, categorizing, and
protecting unknown species. The former gives us a better future, whereas the
latter produces mostly a constant state of guilt about not doing enough.

For example, I am appalled at how we still farm outdoors, where we have little
control over pests and weather, especially given that our main methods of pest
control tend to hurt us, such as through chemicals or through Monsanto-style
genetic modification and patenting. We could begin to move in a completely new
direction, and that is to create something like the Ultima Tower, as
envisioned by Eugene Tsui.

It's clear that if we don't take grand steps towards engineering a sustainable
future, we won't be able to survive a variety of calamities to which we are
now exposed, and in that grand scheme, untold numbers of species dying,
whether at our hands or due to our carelessness, is irrelevant.

<http://www.tdrinc.com/ultima.html> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Tsui>

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cooperadymas
Just when you think that we have become masters of our own domain something
like this comes along. It truly is hard to imagine that with all our
technology, all our exploration, we have only just begun to understand our own
world.

How many of these unknown species exist in places we cannot yet go? The deep
sea, namely.

~~~
technoslut
>How many of these unknown species exist in places we cannot yet go? The deep
sea, namely.

I've thought the same while seeing The Blue Planet. It's interesting that we
seem to be more interested in exploring the galaxy than the deepest depths of
our oceans.

~~~
trafficlight
It's not an either/or situation. There is active work in both areas.

~~~
technoslut
It is when it comes to money.

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tnai
The original paper is available via the open access journal PLoS:
[http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjo...](http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001127)

Also worth reading is Robert May's commentary "Why Worry about How Many
Species and Their Loss?"
[http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjo...](http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001130;jsessionid=2084C66767709ED73A918850DEC2041B.ambra01)

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wollongong
They'll be extinct before they get counted

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Hisoka
Everyday, that % is going up... not always because we're discovering new ones
everyday, but because everyday 300 species die off because of the destruction
we cause.

