Talk:Global biodiversity

Known species
The known species of bacteria is not listed. How, if there are less than 1 million known species of insect, can an estimate of 30 million be reliable? 160 species of unique insect per tree? 50,000 unique species of tropical tree? ~ R . T . G  19:15, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

There needs to be a discussion of eukaryotic vs. prokaryotic diversity of life. All estimates on this page only speak to eukaryotes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kkosman (talk • contribs) 06:38, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Flawed "Estimates"
Amen to the preceding comment. Mr. (Dr.?) Erwin's methodology, if the brief description given here is all there was to it, was not acceptable. There are 50,000 species of tropical trees, and he counted beetles found on ONE species? If that's all he did, how does he know how many of the beetle species he found were really unique to that tree? He doesn't! Even assuming that each and every beetle species inhabits one and only one species of tree (which he did not prove), he has no idea, on the basis of a 1/50,000 sample, just how many beetle species per tree there are on average. I don't think my 12th grade biology teacher would have accepted that "method."

I also believe, based on reading in Indian philosophy--of which there are SEVERAL schools, the Vedanta being only one--that the number 8.4 million has a mystic significance like the number seven or twelve in the Bible. IMO, saying "8.4 million" in a Vedantic context is like saying "ten thousand times ten thousand" in a Biblical context, or like Confucius and Lao Tzu talking about "the ten thousand things." Those are expressions of vast numbers, perhaps of "all there is," but I don't take any of them as literal "estimates" of anything. Brahman, in the sense of "all that is and all that is not," might contain 8.4 million species; I don't believe that number was derived from any hands-on samples at all. Therefore, it gains no extra importance by being mentioned in a thousand-year-old source.

Terry J. Carter (talk) 20:49, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I wonder if, given the recent discussion/debate between Mora and Costello (RE: refererence 2), we should introduce another recent estimate of global species, or at least make mention the 5M +/-3M is disputed. I will make a suggestion of a new clause if everyone is amenable. Fourloves 21:33, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Text moved to talk page
The following was inserted, but belongs on the talk page rather than the page itself:

{Edit: In the opening statement, "Currently about 1.9 million species are known", the number, "1.9 million", conflicts with the total of species listed in the section, "Known species", which sum is, approximately, 4.8 million. Edited by: Robert Randolph Lyons.} Sminthopsis84 (talk) 03:12, 6 July 2013 (UTC)


 * And the reference for all those numbers listed on that long list actually says 1.7 million. Misty MH (talk) 16:41, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Core species
We can tell from this that the word "species" is used broadly, and we can derive from the comment about taxa (at the end) that there are distinct or core species, and then some kinds of offshoots (into the millions, at least for insects, etc.). But what I would like to know is how many "core" species there are, whatever that might be called in this whole spectrum of science and confusion. Is there just one core species of dogs, for example? Or could they all have developed from a couple? They are so diverse-looking vs. humans, who usually look pretty much alike, except for colors and sizes. And cats? And horses? And so on? ("Species", as I was taught – too long ago – could not interbreed, but now I am reading differently.) I am personally more interested in the land animals, including birds, etc. How many core species of these are there? And when we are speaking of core species (MY term), what is the technical term for core species, if there is something agreed upon (for scientists can't seem to agree on the word species, per the article), so that we can do further research? Thanks! The taxonomic ranks are: Domain, Kingdom, Phylum (in zoology, but called division in botany), Class, Order, Family, Genus, and finally Species. I don't know which word or idea I am looking for. Maybe Kingdom or __? and not Species? I dunno. But it branches off into the Animal kingdom. I guess I am not the only one confused, as the Species article talks about 2 dozen different definitions for that word, and the article called Species problem talks about that further! Glancing through several other articles hasn't helped. How about "land animals"? LOL. Is that clear enough? Then they'd argue about alligators or other amphibians. Misty MH (talk) 16:51, 29 July 2013 (UTC) Misty MH, (talk) 16:58, 29 July 2013 (UTC), Misty MH (talk) 17:03, 29 July 2013 (UTC), Misty MH (talk) 17:17, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Lots of confusion overall regarding species estimates
It seems to me that the lede contains too much specific details on the 1 trillion estimate. Also the "86% have not yet been described" does not match the surrounding text, which deals with the full range of estimates. Finally, some mention should be made in the lede of the fact that a lot of the estimates mentioned are for prokaryotic species only.

The "Estimates of total number of species" is confusing too, since the preceding table contains numbers for both described and total species. I have no idea whether Chapman is considered an authority on the matter, but his numbers are given a lot of space in the article, followed by contradicting numbers with no inline source attribution (ie you have to look to the references).

I am hesitant to try to fix the article since I do not know much about the subject, only about numbers and logic :-)

NisJørgensen (talk) 11:03, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I think this comment is still relevant, I'm not sure about how to fix it as probably the whole article should be reestructured, but right now is a quite a chaos of numbers and probably a lot of them are already outdated. Perhaps moving all the phrases concerning number of spieces in the introduction to a separate section and order them chronologically? --Bsckr (talk) 13:02, 30 May 2021 (UTC)