[Taxacom] How many species have been reported only once

[Jim Croft]

Paddy's question is an interesting one but I would be asking it of the
specimens, not the literature.  How many species/taxa are only known
from their type collection?

I suspect this 22% is a gross underestimation of or lack of knowledge
(double negatives ftw!).  These 'singletons', perhaps even because of
their rarity and curiousity, are nearly always mentioned in subsequent
revisions, floras and faunas with almost by definition, little
increase in knowledge.

If we we were able to account for this 'replication of ignorance' in
the literature, the figure might well end up closer to the 50-65% that
Paddy is trying to run to ground.

jim

On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 8:34 AM, Chris Freeland
<Chris.Freeland at mobot.org> wrote:
> BHL ran a somewhat similar query on March 1, looking for the number of
> names that occurred on a single page.  Short answer: 329,000 out of
> 1,491,000 unique names, or roughly 22%.
>
> Details of the query & data downloads available at http://bit.ly/dpto0e
>
> Chris
> *****************************
> Chris Freeland
> Technical Director
> Biodiversity Heritage Library
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Roderic Page [mailto:r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk]
> Sent: Friday, March 19, 2010 3:59 PM
> To: David Patterson; Chris Freeland
> Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] How many species have been reported only once
>
> Paddy, wouldn't a quick and dirty way to answer this be to use BHL to
> build a  frequency distribution of uBio names over BHL items? If info
> only in original description then name will typically occur in only one
> item. Might have to exclude some items (e.g. compations and indices),
> but it would give you a ball park figure.
>
> Rod
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On 19 Mar 2010, at 19:13, David Patterson <dpatterson at eol.org> wrote:
>
>> I have heard suggestions that our understanding of 50% and 65% of all
>> species is limited to the information that was included in the
>> original description.  That is, for very many species, there have not
>> been any further publications that add new information. These are the
>> 'once only' species.  If the proportion is as high as this, it bears
>> upon the reliability and effectiveness of the discovery process, how
>> many species there are, and on asymmetry within our discipline.
>>
>> Does anyone know of analyses that explore this matter, or have any
>> data to confirm the proportion of 'once only' species in their sphere
>> of expertise?
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> David Patterson
>>
>> --
>> David J Patterson
>> Senior Taxonomist, EOL
>> CoPI Life Sciences, Data Conservancy
>>
>> Biodiversity Informatics
>> Marine Biological Laboratory
>> Woods Hole, Massachusetts 02543, USA.
>>
>> (+) (1) 508 289 7260
>> dpatterson at mbl.edu
>>
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Jim Croft ~ jim.croft at gmail.com ~ +61-2-62509499 ~
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