How many species inhabit the planet?

[tocqueville]

By Ed Stoddard
Fri Mar 17, 8:09 AM ET

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Scientists and policy makers who want to slow the rate at which species are being lost face a conundrum: No one knows how many different plants and animals there are.

"Some people who study insects think there may be as many as 100 million species out there," said Jeff McNeely, the chief scientist at the World Conservation Union.

"But if you took a poll of biologists, I think most would say there are somewhere around 15 million," he told Reuters by telephone from the organization's Swiss headquarters.

According to the Collins English Dictionary, a species is "a class of plants or animals whose members have the same main characteristics and are able to breed with each other."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060317/sc_nm/environment_species_dc

itz amazing how much you can fit in a middle-sized ark....

[longship]

1. Almost all of them are bacteria.

As Stephen J Gould said: This isn't the "Age of Mammals" it's the "Age of Bacteria".

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_bacteria.html

[northzax]

6. or insects, of course

as E.O. Wilson posited, there is a greater biomass of ants on the planet than humans.

[derby378]

2. Then again, there's always the discovery...

...of new species or species that were previously thought extinct, like the coelocanth off the Madagascar coast and that marsupial in that remote corner of Indonesia where humans inexplicably never set foot.

Extinction is regrettable, but there is still hope. Evolution didn't just grind to a halt because one species learned to make fire and started debating the merits of Wittgenstein.

[qazplm]

5. Does that mean I'm not evolved...

since short of a lighter or match I cant make fire, and I have no clue who or what Wittgenstein is?


Goes back to throwing feces.

[wiggs]

3. Fewer today than yesterday. nt

[Dead_Parrot]

4. Amen to that

If we think about the problem long enough, it will go away... :(