That is an amazing number in one year. Just think how many more there are that we don't know about!
See here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4033555.stm
See here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4033555.stm
13000 New Marine Species Found In One Year
- Thread starter verona
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That figure's crude and somewhat misleading. Most of these "species" are listed as "new" merely because they don't fit into existing taxonomic keys, and the regional experts are stumped. In a survey report, such animals might be referred to as something like...
Station 3633A: Owenia sp. 38
True species status requires an extraordinarily vigorous literature search and organism workup. Often this process takes years. During this time many of these "species" turn out to be damaged, juvenile, different sexed, or otherwise altered versions of pre-existing species. After all this filtering, your 13,000 figure drops to something far less, I believe <1,000 is what's being reported. That's still a bloody lot of critters, however.
I've got an unidentified deepwater anemone in my lab that's probably a new species. It can therefore be tentatively called "new". If I ever get an anemone taxonomist to spend months to years analyzing it, it may prove in time to be a new species. This is how the system works.
Station 3633A: Owenia sp. 38
True species status requires an extraordinarily vigorous literature search and organism workup. Often this process takes years. During this time many of these "species" turn out to be damaged, juvenile, different sexed, or otherwise altered versions of pre-existing species. After all this filtering, your 13,000 figure drops to something far less, I believe <1,000 is what's being reported. That's still a bloody lot of critters, however.
I've got an unidentified deepwater anemone in my lab that's probably a new species. It can therefore be tentatively called "new". If I ever get an anemone taxonomist to spend months to years analyzing it, it may prove in time to be a new species. This is how the system works.
I just wrote in my column about a scientist who described a new species of parasitic worm in the scientific literature. He found it wriggling around inside a female paper nautilus's body. It later turned out to be the hectocotylus of a male nautilus, the specialized arm that transfers sperm to the female. A friend of mine who is a cephalopd expert described the hectocotylus as a "French tickler" (or should that be freedom tickler now?).
Dr. Bill
Dr. Bill
Thanks Bill! That reminds of another example of questionable species status. There are these two species of Paleozoic shark (obviously they're fossils). Both look radically different from one another. However, for species "A", all known specimens are female, and for species "B", all specimens are male. They both co-occur in geologic time.
So, are they the same species, or just bad luck in the fossil hunting? Perhaps we'll NEVER know... bleah!
So, are they the same species, or just bad luck in the fossil hunting? Perhaps we'll NEVER know... bleah!
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