Counting the Microcosmos
Thu, 06 May 2010 1:36 pm – Posted by Mandy | 5 Comments
Blogger: NIWA biodiversity scientist Dennis Gordon
“God has an inordinate fondness for beetles,” British geneticist J.B.S. Haldane once quipped.
That’s because there are more named beetle species than any other form of life. The same might be said of worms. You might not realise it but vermiform (worm-like) is the most widely adopted shape in the animal kingdom.
There are flatworms and tapeworms, ribbon worms, spoon worms, peanut worms, arrow worms, eel worms and round worms, acorn worms, velvet worms, goblet worms, horseshoe worms, bristleworms, penis worms, and even worm-shaped crustaceans (tongue worms), echinoderms (sea cucumbers), fish (lampreys, hagfish, eels), amphibians (caecilians) and reptiles (snakes).
In total, 1.9 million species of life have been named globally, and we’re still counting. In New Zealand and around the world the rate of discovery of new species exceeds the capacity to name and classify it - there is a desperate shortage of taxonomists.*
As you will know, this year is the Year of Biodiversity – a celebration of all life forms from bacteria to blue whales.
Over the past ten years I have been coordinating a global effort (involving 222 scientists in 18 countries) to quantify the number of living and fossil species that we have in New Zealand. So far, we’ve clocked up 54,200 living species (with 8000 not yet named) and around 14,000 fossil ones, but we can expect tens of thousands more species to be discovered, not counting bacteria.
The 582 page first volume of the inventory has been published, and there’s another two that are following hot on their heels. And at the rate we’re discovering new species, it’s likely there will be innumerable additions to the online version over the years.
Our native biodiversity is super special, with heaps of species, genera, families and some higher taxa found nowhere else in the world. New Zealand has a little over 28,570 endemic species all environments. We MUST protect our unique natural heritage.
And new discoveries happen almost every day. In the world’s first marine BioBlitz, on Wellington’s south coast in 2007, more than 20 new species were found at Island Bay, including a mysterious creature that has become New Zealand’s first named acoel.
What’s an acoel? It’s a group of tiny worms that used to be classified as flatworms but are now thought to be the most primitive bilateral animals (a tad higher on the rung of life than jellyfish).
So if you’re going into our deep blue yonder, or out into the forest take note of the little stuff, you could become a discoverer yourself!
Hi Dennis,
Thanks for the great post!
Does or will NZ researchers participate in the Encyclopaedia of Life? http://www.eol.org/
I know a Maori Worldview may apply a different approach, and also a different ‘taxonomy’- but at a basic level are we documenting maori names as a standard for the more identifiable species so that these names are retained, relearnt/learnt? (perhaps not the huge range of worm species).
28,570 endemic species - wow. I wonder how much of that biodiversity is locked up in schedule 4 conservation land?
The New Zealand species list from volume 1 of the Inventory has already been sent to the Encyclopedia of Life. In fact, EoL, the Catalogue of Life, and the World Register of Marine Species are all interlinked [I am directly involved with the latter two activities] and share information, which is great. Regarding common (vernacular) names and Maori names - Landcare Research has a list for vascular plants and they exist for many other groups, though not for all species (which may be impractical or impossible - especially for species that are very small or hard to tell apart.
In response to your question Michael, the figure of 28,570 endemic species is not just for the land, but marine and freshwater environments as well. We have 32,437 terrestrial species, 17,253 marine, and 5,509 freshwater. Endemism hasn’t yet been determined precisely for all these environments (except marine, where it is 39%). On land, dominated by arthropods, endemism is likely to exceed 67%. For arthropods as a whole, as with vascular plants, endemism is nearer 80%.
Here’s a fungal slant on things …
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I think it’s worth saying the pie chart represents the historical division of effort of taxonomists in naming species, and most probably does not represent the actual distribution of species ‘out there in the wild’. For example, there are currently 97,000 named species of fungi globally (that’s 5% of the total). But there have been several exercises that point to a conservative figure of 1.5 million fungal species in total. i.e. we have named just 7% of the fungi globally and the remainder are waiting to be discovered - hopefully before they become extinct.
In New Zealand we have named 2,789 indigenous species of fungi, and a further 2,639 exotic species. That’s just a shade short of the figures of 2,357 indigenous named plants, and 2,436 naturalised exotic plants, which are a relatively well known group (not considering the estimated 30,000 plants species in gardens!). Several studies indicate we can expect 6 times as many fungi as there are plants. So we can expect 14,000 species of fungi in New Zealand and we have currently named only 2,789 of them! Some of those unamed species are ‘known unknowns’, and we just don’t have the resources to name them properly. The rest are out there waiting to be discovered - and not necessarily by professional taxonomists.
I’m an amateur mycologist spending occasional weekends discovering the fungi in our forests. And I also look in parks and gardens - with the dog in tow. Over 10 years I can say that on average 1 in 5 of the species I find is a new record for New Zealand (a headache for MAF Biosecurity), and 1 in 20 is undescribed, and will probably stay that way until I retire and finally have time to do write them up properly.
If anybody wants a challenge then put down the bird book and the binoculars and pick up a fungus!
And in support of Dennis’ work …
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Although globally we have ‘named’ 97,000 species of fungi, we actually have 338,000 names for those 97,000 species. I.e. for various reasons (generally a lack of access to information) the same species has been given 3 different names by different people in the 250 years we have been giving ’scientific names’ to things. The same is true to a lesser or greater degree for all species.
This historical lack of access to taxonomic information, and the subsequent chaos these ’synonyms’ create for users of biodiversity information (especially in conservation and biosecurity), is being addressed by many initiatives across the planet, of which EOL is just one.
The data for Dennis’ New Zealand Biodiversity Inventory is now part of a one such national project called the New Zealand Organisms Register (NZOR - http://www.nzor.org.nz/). This will be the online version to which Dennis refers. NZOR itself is a regional hub in a global network called Species2000 - http://www.sp2000.org/
Mobilizing existing information is clearly sensible and achievable, but I’ll join Dennis in stressing that we actually know surprisingly little about what organisms live in New Zealand. We live in one of the planet’s acknowledged 25 biodiversity hot spots, and unlike many of the 25 we live in a first world country that should have the resource to do something about it.
Many of those organisms, that we don’t know about, are critical to ecosytem functions and services. For example the forests simply wouldn’t exist without their closely associated fungi mobilizing, ferrying and recycling nutrients. Sadly, the lack of knowledge of our own national, globally unique, natural heritage is unlikley to change given the current level of funding and lack of available expertise.
The rest of the world looks to New Zealand for guidance and examples of best-practice in biodiversity management, knowing we are the guardians of a precious and threatened Eden. But when it comes to primary knowldge of our biodiversity I think we are somewhat lacking.
I hear there are researchers in 25 countries are now aiming to bar code 500,000 species -
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/big-idea/11/biodiversity-pg2
Personally, I think that is a huge waste of time and money given that we haven’t made an inventort of all of our species?