This is a very difficult question, but yes, is posible to know the number of species described daily. Just to give you an example, in the year 2016, science described around 18,000 new plant and animal species, this is equivalent to 49,3 species per day. In order to find out how many were insects you have to consult the zoological abstracts indexs. Please read the list in this link, enjoy.

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-new-species-top-10-20170522-htmlstory.html

https://www.scidev.net/global/biodiversity/feature/biodiversity-facts-and-figures-1.html

dr. zaman is a specialist

Hi Filippo, it is indeed very interesting question, but not so easy to anwer. For example, in Orthoptera species file (and in other Species Files), you can enter the complex search and see how many species of Orthoptera and related orders are described e.g. per each year, so you can extract daily mean from those values for those orders. Unfortunatelly, for other groups of biota, this task is not so simple. For some superclasters you cannot find exactly how many species there are today, or even approximation (e.g. a lot of Excavata, Archea, Amoebozoa ...). Probably experts from some groups will know for each group, so you can also get an overview of how is it tough to make approximation of the number you ask. Cheers,

This is a very difficult question, but yes, is posible to know the number of species described daily. Just to give you an example, in the year 2016, science described around 18,000 new plant and animal species, this is equivalent to 49,3 species per day. In order to find out how many were insects you have to consult the zoological abstracts indexs. Please read the list in this link, enjoy.

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-new-species-top-10-20170522-htmlstory.html

https://www.scidev.net/global/biodiversity/feature/biodiversity-facts-and-figures-1.html

Muchas gracias Luis.

Saludos

Filippo

A la orden Filippo

Responsive networking in Global Bioinformatic system updating is a tool that can be harnessed in identifying numbers of insecta described on daily basis. This will give concise and reliable information of the species.

Thanks Lawal.

Ciao

Filippo

Cannot expect I think..!!!

Kenneth:

Extinction is not a fiction, is real. Today, tropical forests are disappearing rapidly due to agricultural and livestock expansion and over-exploitation of natural resources. For nobody is a secret that the species of animals and plants are extinguishing. I invite you to come to a tropical country to realize how the industrialized countries with mega-energetic and mining projects are destroying the Amazon jungle in developing countries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS_lRabpgqw

Hi Kenneth, how can you state (scientifically, literature source please) that there is no biodiversity crisis?

Strange argument Dr Towe!

You want to discard the baby with the bathwater.

Finding new species is not the same as replacing those that go extinct.

I would accept that some aspects of modern biodiversity conservation have been exaggerated (and other aspects ignored), and there is plenty of scope to debate details (I am a researcher too) ... but there are plenty of good data out there too that suggest legitimate concern.

IUCN note 322 recorded extinctions of terrestrial vertebrates since 1500, while populations of the great majority of the other species have declined by considerable amounts.

IUCN lists only 69 species as extinct in the wild but still extant in zoos or herbaria. It doesn’t seem so unreasonable to assume that the true numbers are much higher given how hard it is to know when something is extinct (it becomes increasingly hard to find even before that after all), especially as we don’t even have a good knowledge of all the species and where they occur yet. Many plant species have only ever been recorded once.

Even in the best known groups, for example the primates, there are still new species being described (more than 90 in the last two decades). There will be more. We cannot expect to track these when we don’t yet know they are there. Better data would be good … but actions would be better.

Denial can have a cost. I worked briefly in cancer research earlier in my career ... one of the well known stories is how so many powerful lobby groups had once denied that smoking is bad for health ... and how many people died while the ultimately overwhelming evidence was gathered. I think you can see why conservationists feel it necessary to work with the best working knowledge available rather than wait (its imperfect but it is pragmatic too).

Even in your wealthy US homelands there are plenty of species to worry about: Freshwater bivalves, Hawaiian honeycreepers ... passenger pigeons ... are these exaggerated?

I work a lot in the Borneo lowlands ... there are not so many such forests left, and most are severely degraded and subject to threat from fire, clearance, hunting etc. These forests were (and some still are) rich in species. The problem is real.

Is it a crisis? Whatever you want to call it there is plenty to be concerned about.

Sources:

Pimm, S. L. et al. Science 344, 1246752 (2014).

Dirzo, R. et al. Science 345, 401-406 (2014)

IUCN.org

It is a surprising view. It doesn't seem logical to me, but perhaps I don't grasp your point.

For interest please let me check I follow your claim and its implications. Is it correct that you think:

1--The net number of named extant species is what matters

2--As long as we can keep describing more new species than we lose there is no net extinction

3--If we know there are plenty of undescribed species we shouldn’t worry about them going extinct as we haven’t counted them yet anyway (so they don’t count)

4--If species went extinct before we named them they don’t count as extinction

???

(Just to be clear I disagree on all those points ...).

BTW the main threats until now have been habitat loss and over-harvesting.

Also you seem to confuse the processes of decline (which are generally systematic) and allow a population to become vulnerable, with the final steps in the loss (certainly the final loss can be due to just a small number of people). (Consider how many people hunted passenger pigeons versus how many killed the last one).

thanks

Sorry to say Kenneth, you obviously do not know the subject at all.

Dear Dr Towe

I was curious to understand your argument, but I am still struggling. We can all learn by listening carefully to those we disagree with. But I can neither refute or accept a logic that I cannot grasp.

If you have a clear compelling argument please start at the beginning and spell it out so that others can follow your ideas.

Thanks

Dear Dr Towe

clear - thanks.

"It was not about how many went extinct daily" indeed that is correct, but as far as I see you were the one who raised that theme and sought to critique it (for whatever reason) and it was your point and critique that I was (we were?) reacting to.

To address your point: You accept that described species are only a fraction of total species. But you also believe that only described species count (extinction of undescribed species lack any significance to you). I still don't follow why a rational person would state that.

It seems ironic that your viewpoint gives such importance to something (species naming) that many of us see as an imperfect (albeit useful) aspect of biological practice: see, e.g. https://www.researchgate.net/post/Why_do_many_of_us_still_think_that_species_are_real

and such little importance to the actual loss of biological diversity that most of us are concerned about.

But fine ... we can leave it there.

thanks again

I totally disagree with Kenneth's approach to the biodiversity crisis in the world with the argument that extinction is a term coined by politicians and scientists to obtain economic resources for conservation of species. It seems that Kenneth is not very convinced about the actual number of species of animals and plants that have become extinct today, but the point of this discussion about the biodiversity crisis is not how many species there are or how many species have become extinct. The real crisis today in biodiversity is occurring in tropical countries where the rainforests that host more than 70% of the world's biodiversity are disappearing because of anthropic activities. To give an example, the island of Borneo has lost more than 70% of its forests in the last 60 years to give way to plantations of oil palm and cattle. How many species of endemic plants and animals of Borneo will not have disappeared because of this? The image of Borneo forest destruction says it all.

https://www.rainforest-rescue.org/topics/palm-oil

https://www.scidev.net/global/biodiversity/feature/biodiversity-facts-and-figures-1.html

http://wwf.panda.org/knowledge_hub/where_we_work/borneo_forests/borneo_deforestation/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stop-burning-rain-forests-for-palm-oil/

Dear Dr Towe,

I missed your final note, and see it late.

I stand by what I said. I still don't grasp the logic in your "net gain" position. But I see that that is mutual. So as I asked you to explain your position let me do you the courtesy of explaining mine.

As scientists most of us are used to inference and induction ... these are how we understand the world. I suspect that as a scientist you use them too. We cannot know everything all the time.

As a tropical ecologist I often deal with undescribed species. There are undescribed species everywhere. There are various "conceptual types" of these undescribed species including clear physical entities that we collect (and may get named later, though many do not), those we observe and count ("morphotypes"), those that other people tell me they have seen (maybe experts, maybe local people etc.), and also those we infer from data. Some of these I may be fairly certain about, others less so ... much depends on circumstances.

It may help if I make this more concrete with examples. See for example the work we did in the foothills of Papua's Foja Mountains: many of our botanical specimens (>30%) did not match any named species, but we can still count them and infer that if we continue to collect we would find many more new species in that region. I don't need to name them to know they are there.

See. E.g.,

Article The forests and related vegetation of Kwerba, on the Foja Fo...

Many new finds are also possible if we look at relatively understudied taxa in the right places, for example lichens in the wet tropics: e.g.,

Article Four new Arthoniomycetes from Bwindi Impenetrable National P...

The point is we knew with some confidence that these species were there to be found even before we collected them or described them. Now we've looked we are even more confident that there are many more such species.

Why would I only care if these were going to go extinct at some future point ONLY if they were already described? How would you argue that?

Consider the new orangutan species (Pongo tapanuliensis). It was only published last year. It is highly endangered with fewer than one thousand animals and a shrinking habitat. People have been talking about this unusual population for almost two decades (but they didn’t have the skeletons and genetic analyses to clarify if it achieved full species status or not). If this Pongo tapanuliensis population had gone extinct before description would you have argued it is not an extinction? From your statements it seems so ...

As I said previously, I find it ironic that you make your foundation on something that we biologist find flimsy (the pragmatic application of the species concept is much debated). I am happier to make the generalizations where the general patterns are clear. The decline in many many species worldwide seems such a case. The summary data are imperfect but good enough. I conclude that the inference of a crisis is well founded. We don't need perfect data to know it (we'll never have perfect data in any case). There is plenty to be concerned about.

For example ...

Article The Amphibian Extinction Crisis -what will it take to put th...

Dear Dr Towe

I don't need you to repeat your claims. I have read them already.

I am explaining my response. I said "as I asked you to explain your position let me do you the courtesy of explaining mine".

Please read my comment more carefully and (I hope) you will see that I am addressing what you stated, and explaining (in small part) my disagreement: i.e., how do we know when any taxa is present or extinct? How certain do you need to be to call something robust science?

Why do you think conservation science should be held to your impossible standards?

Curious to hear.

It appears that Dr. Towe's argument, somewhat enhanced, could be formulated as follows: in the course of evolution, new species arise and old species disappear; it is a routine process (at a proper time scale). If a new species arises, it can be found by humans and added to the list of extant species. If a known species is lost, it is removed from the list. Then all those concerned about the number of species should indeed be monitoring the list of extant species and judge about the crisis based on the dynamics of the number of species in the list.

Unfortunately, the current focus on "biodiversity" understood as the number of species, and all this hype around cute species being lost, makes conservation efforts vulnerable to this type of arguments. These arguments won't make much impact on people impassioned about particular animals. But they can impact the more cold-blooded members of the society who may come to occasionally consider whether species loss is a serious business using their logic and (usually limited) knowledge rather than emotions.

I sometimes even think that if I were in favor of unlimited growth of human population to sustain my current profits (e.g. a developer), I would financially support the "biodiversity loss hysteria" because in many cases it effectively diverts conservation efforts from what really matters: loss of ecological function and environmental destabilization that follows ecosystem destruction -- irrespective of what happens to the total species numbers.

As Kevin Gaston (2011) put it: " In contrast to their rarity, the commonness of species has historically received surprisingly little explicit attention from ecologists."

Kevin J. Gaston. Common Ecology. BioScience, Volume 61, Issue 5, 1 May 2011, Pages 354–362, https://doi.org/10.1525/bio.2011.61.5.4

Dear Dr Towe

I admit I am disappointed. I had hoped that one or more of us might learn something.

There are plenty of good nitty gritty issues in conservation priority assessments etc. that you as an experienced scientist from another discipline might have chosen to critique and illuminate: e.g., uncertainty and inference, or even precautionary approaches, ...

I had hoped to persuade you that your emphasis on described species may be on less solid ground than you think, while our (speaking as a conservation type) estimates of "unnamed species" can be near equally concrete (there is no sharp line between these and we can certainly count "unnamed species" in many situations). I also pointed out that sciences all use theory and inference (who uses just observations and no theory?). Our modern world works largely on the basis of such theories -- why should conservation be different? Why would you insist that you can set rules on this anyway? A good question is how well tested and reliable these theory based approaches are (I had hoped that that might be your focus as there is plenty there to examine).

Critiques of loosely linked media stories and tangential arguments doesn't seem to advance the topic (for me at least).

(BTW the controversy around polar bear numbers is well known. As the latest IUCN assessment states: of the 19 subpopulations recognised by IUCN "5 appeared to be stable, 1 may be increasing, 2 were decreasing, and 11 had insufficient data to estimate a trend", see Durner et al. 2018 for more details. I suspect you might be more satisfied with the transparency around these assessments if you actually looked at the source literature rather than rely on sensationalist news sources).

Thanks for your time in any case.

Dear Dr Towe

You say "Name a few..."Founding Director"."

As the comment is directed to me presumably I should understand this statement. I don't. Are you confusing me with someone else?

BTW even if I agree that the stories you pick are a bit silly (I agree many such media stories are distorted in some way, and I could find thousands of others on many many topics, also misleading research, its easy to find) ... but so what? -- it doesn't show anything to contradict the view that there is justifiable concern about the global trends in species decline ... which was your claim (if I understood correctly).

Do you assert that the loss of rain forests in Borneo (for example) should not be a conservation concern and there is no likelihood of any of the Borneo species being lost? I am genuinely interested to know why you, or any scientifically trained person, would think that as it is not a viewpoint I hear very often. I don't expect to agree but I am intrigued.

You ask me to name species for you (maybe I don't follow your point or you are being rhetorical?)? I suggest you cutout the middleman and look up the IUCN redlist yourself (http://www.iucnredlist.org/). You can see all their assessments. The IUCN also provide more comprehensive summaries of what we know and infer about many selected species (including polar bears, see the citation in the previous comment). IUCN are the ones that decide what defines threat levels and how that is applied. I suggest you focus your critical thinking on those formal IUCN outputs and see what you come up with. If you offer compelling criticisms many people will be interested. Good luck!

Dear Dr Makarieva

Thanks for your input. I agree that arguments are vulnerable to distortion, but I disagree that we should judge some motivations for conservation as more worthy than others. I suspect that many of us prefer a world where we keep pandas AND ecological processes and that to a large degree the tax paying public, and private donors etc. would agree.

Conservation is not monolithic and it seems to me that we should welcome that diversity and promote it.

Douglas

Dear Dr Towe

You do appear to imply that I am inherently part of this conspiracy to manufacture a crisis (for money!). Furthermore, you do address your point directly at me (though it is nothing to do with my previous suggestions). So please excuse me if I find your intentions and targets somewhat confusing.

Anyway, getting back to my suggestions. The authority I would look to for the best information on the global bio-conservation problems is the IUCN. (If you genuinely want evidence from a credible source that is where you should go). So, please examine and evaluate the IUCN lists (and associated information) and provide specific concrete criticisms to substantiate your claims. That would be valuable.

It is highly interesting to observe how this question's topic has developed from "how many descriptions per annum" to "biodiversity loss", "crisis" and even "climate changes".

Since the answer was already provided on the number of new descriptions per year (roughly 18 000 new species rank taxa), I am quite curios about the extinctions.

Following the logic and having Luis Miguel's provided maps for Borneo cover loss, I would immediately agree about the myriads of extinctions happened on Borneo during the last 60 years. So much of theory. But the situation on place can be (and usually is) different.

Speaking about Borneo or Indonesia in general (where I am working since 12 years already and visited this area 11 times) first of all think in terms which species will not benefit from the loss of primary forest. Sure we know what these species are. Than think about how much we know about historical and present distribution of most Indonesian species (even iconic Sumatran rhino or Javan leopard)… Few or nothing. Yes, for large species we can find evidence and predict population decrease or even extinctions, but for most animal / plant taxa it will be virtually impossible to document extinction since (again) very limited information on them is available. And, not doubt, extinctions happens and many species are driving towards extinction by human activities much faster than 100 000 y before, but... I have many examples of re-discovering potentially extinct invertebrate species on Java, the Moluccas and in Papua. For invertebrates even a tiny patch of vegetation, primary or not, often provides enough niche for sustainable survival.

Why I am telling this? Just because I wish there was a comprehensive study on the impact of changing ecosystem / land use on the fauna and flora at a global scale! This is a brilliant idea for a project and I even have some suggestions for the area for such kind of research. Look at Java - formerly flourishing forested island now populated by almost 150 000 000 people. Basically no unchanged habitat left in lowland areas (except the very East and West). From this area, rich historical material is available in collections. Why not to re-count / re-discover these species?! I think, we might be surprised to find most of them (except Javan tiger for sure).

Otherwise our discussion is sometimes very declarative here - we definitively need more facts to argue!

I have "discovered" this discussion only now, but I am horrified! I can easily understand that some demagogous politicians can "demand" something like "to itemize the actual extinct species, by taxonomic name and compare that with the number of new species with taxonomic names", but did not expect a scientist to say anythng like this! We can (and, as scientists, almost routinely do) make more or less exact estimations also in cases when not a single element of the estimated population has been known "by name" (otherwise no scientific research would have been possible!)! E.g. here are estimations of the numbers of victims of past earthquakes, we know that millions of people died from "Black Death" in XIV century, there are even (not very precise but reliable) estimations of the scale of great Ordovician or Devonian extinctions hunderds of millions years ago - although certainly very-very few individual victims could have been named! Contrary to what Kenneth claims, what counts are not "those we KNOW are gone and those we KNOW are new" - what counts is how many (known or still undiscovered) are gone and how many (described or still undescribed) have yet remained! And this we are able (even if not with "mathematical exactitude") estimate, and estimations fully confirm Wheeler's statement!

On the other hand many (perhaps majority) of those (referred to by Dmitry ["even a tiny patch of vegetation, primary or not, often provides enough niche for sustainable survival"]) still perhaps surviving are in fact "extant" only formally, not as real elements of biodiversity, in sufficient numbers to effectively fill their ecological roles or even to assure the viability of (even if not further damaged) population!

By the way, if anything is an "absurd comment" it is the assertion that "The diversity crisis is manufactured" or that politicians "have been constructing crises for decades. It makes money" - in fact politicians (and also farmers, fishers, foresters, businessmen &c.) have been denying biodiversity crisis (and e.g. global warming &c.) to provide the "alibi" and spare money for further clearing forests, overfish the seas, use coal as source of energy, promote further demographic "explosion" &c. It is, unfortunately, this what really "makes money"!