[Taxacom] New Publication: Numbers of Living Species in Austrakiaand the World

[christian thompson]

Nice job, Arthur, but ...

What always upsets me is the lack of resolution for the largest (most speciose) taxon, insects. With more than half of all life being insects, but no break down to the smaller but distinct groups, like beetles, flies, moth & butterflies, etc. For the Arachnida (spiders, scorpions, etc) at least gets two pages and a break down. Why not insects?

Getting good figures for insects isn't difficult any more, just takes a little surfing. You can, for example, go to diptera.org and get a very accurate count of the flies. See http://www.sel.barc.usda.gov/Diptera/names/Status/bdwdstat.htm 
for a count of 149,199 species of flies as of July last year. That is, two and half times as many fly species as all of the vertebrates. We also give regional statistics (that is, species by families in various biotic regions).

Insects should not be ignored, simply lumped them into a large number is not an answer. If they represent half of the pie, then you should break that half down as you do the other half, into smaller, more meaningful units. Does it make sense to devote a whole page to group of 23 species at the same time devoting only page for some 950,000 species?

Oh, well ...

F. Christian Thompson
Systematic Entomology Lab., USDA
c/o Smithsonian Institution
MRC-0169 NHB
PO Box 37012
Washington, DC 20013-7012
(202) 382-1800 voice
(202) 786-9422 FAX
cthompso at sel.barc.usda.gov e-mail
www.diptera.org  web site

>>> <taxacom3 at achapman.org> 01/05/07 06:18PM >>>
A publication on the numbers of living species in Australia and the World has just been published by the Australian Department of Environment and Heritage.

The numbers of species has been estimated by collating information from systematists, taxonomic literature, on-line resources and previous compilations.  Estimates for the numbers of published species is given for each large taxonomic grouping for both Australia and the World, along with estimates of the total numbers of species, and the estimated/calculated percentage endemism for Australia.

The publication is available electronically at

http://www.deh.gov.au/biodiversity/abrs/publications/other/species-numbers/index.html 

Bibliographic Information:

Chapman, A.D. (2006). Numbers of living species in Australia and the World. 60pp. Canberra: Australian Biological Resources Study. 
ISBN (printed): 978 0 642 56849 6l 
ISBN (online): 978 0 642 56850 2. http://www.deh.gov.au/biodiversity/abrs/publications/other/species-numbers/index.html. 

Arthur D. Chapman
Toowoomba, Australia

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