[Taxacom] How many species have been reported only once

[Donat Agosti]

The way I understand TaxonFinder, the tool to find names in BHL material, is
that it does not find names that are not already indexed in Ubio. With other
words, Xus bus or derivatives of (X. bus, bus, etc.)are not found because of
its structure ??us ??us, but because Xus bus is listed in Ubio's index. If
this is correct, the number of species mentioned only rarely must be much
higher, assuming that undiscovered name strings are not common.

Donat


-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Chris Freeland
Sent: Saturday, March 20, 2010 1:05 AM
To: Roderic Page; David Patterson
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] How many species have been reported only once

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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