[Taxacom] Global counts of accepted genera

[Peter Uetz]

Rees et al. come up with a mean estimate of 5,716 reptilian genera (including birds),
which is a 1.65-fold overestimate of the 3459 reptilian genera in Avibase and the Reptile Database (2265 bird + 1194 reptile genera).

These two groups are a well-studied sample (about 11,000 species each) with a third of all vertebrates,
hence I would conclude that Tony’s estimate is clearly quite a bit over the actual number
(even when considering his estimate of ~21% of genus names being fossil).

Just saying …



>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Tony Rees via Taxacom" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu <mailto:taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>>
>> To: "taxacom" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu <mailto:taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>>; "Tony Rees"
>> <tonyrees49 at gmail.com <mailto:tonyrees49 at gmail.com>>
>> Sent: Tuesday, March 31, 2020 4:40 AM
>> Subject: [Taxacom] Global counts of accepted genera
>> 
>> 
>>> Dear Taxacomers,
>>> 
>>> Have you ever wondered how many genus names for accepted taxa have been
>>> published, broken down by taxonomic group? and/or "all names", synonyms
>>> (sensu lato) included (together with the actual lists of names as a
>>> downloadable file) - well, the following newly published paper in the
>>> journal "Megataxa" goes some way to answering these questions:
>>> 
>>> Rees et al., 2020: "All genera of the world: an overview and estimates
>>> based on the March 2020 release of the Interim Register of Marine and
>>> Nonmarine Genera (IRMNG)"
>>> https://www.mapress.com/j/mt/article/view/megataxa.1.2.3 <https://www.mapress.com/j/mt/article/view/megataxa.1.2.3>
>>> 
>>> In case this is of interest, in the present "interesting" times...
>>> 
>>> Regards to all - Tony
>>> Tony Rees, New South Wales, Australia
>>> https://about.me/TonyRees


————————————————————————————————————
Peter Uetz
Center for Biological Data Science (CeBiDaS)
(formerly Center for the Study of Biological Complexity)
Virginia Commonwealth University
Richmond, VA 23284
USA

Reptile Database (http://www.reptile-database.org <http://www.reptile-database.org/>)
http://people.vcu.edu/~uetz/ <http://people.vcu.edu/~uetz/>