Some cool animal species images:
black primeval bug crawling along a {time(?)}- line
Image by quapan
This insect - I don't know the name of the species - looks very primeval and is much more indigenous to the earth than (womb)mankind ...
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Wild world: Millions of unseen species fill Earth By SETH BORENSTEIN - AP Science Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — Our world is a much wilder place than it looks. A new study estimates that Earth has almost 8.8 million species, but we've only discovered about a quarter of them. And some of yet-to-be-seen ones could be in our own backyards, scientists say.
So far, only 1.9 million species have been found. Recent discoveries have been small and weird: a psychedelic frogfish, a lizard the size of a dime and even a blind hairy mini-lobster at the bottom of the ocean.
"We are really fairly ignorant of the complexity and colorfulness of this amazing planet," said the study's co-author, Boris Worm, a biology professor at Canada's Dalhousie University. "We need to expose more people to those wonders. It really makes you feel differently about this place we inhabit."
While some scientists and others may question why we need to know the number of species, others say it's important.
There are potential benefits from these undiscovered species, which need to be found before they disappear from the planet, said famed Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson, who was not part of this study. Some of modern medicine comes from unusual plants and animals.
"We won't know the benefits to humanity (from these species), which potentially are enormous," the Pulitzer Prize-winning Wilson said. "If we're going to advance medical science, we need to know what's in the environment."
Biologists have long known that there's more to Earth than it seems, estimating the number of species to be somewhere between 3 million and 100 million. Figuring out how much is difficult.
Worm and Camilo Mora of the University of Hawaii used complex mathematical models and the pace of discoveries of not only species, but of higher classifications such as family to come up with their estimate.
Their study, published Tuesday in the online journal PLoS Biology, a publication of the Public Library of Science, estimated the number of species at nearly 8.8 million.
Of those species, 6.5 million would be on land and 2.2 million in the ocean, which is a priority for the scientists doing the work since they are part of the Census of Marine Life, an international group of scientists trying to record all the life in the ocean.
The research estimates that animals rule with 7.8 million species, followed by fungi with 611,000 and plants with just shy of 300,000 species.
While some new species like the strange mini-lobster are in exotic places such as undersea vents, "many of these species that remain to be discovered can be found literally in our own backyards," Mora said.
Outside scientists, such as Wilson and preeminent conservation biologist Stuart Pimm of Duke University, praised the study, although some said even the 8.8 million number may be too low.
The study said it could be off by about 1.3 million species, with the number somewhere between 7.5 million and 10.1 million. But evolutionary biologist Blair Hedges of Penn State University said he thinks the study is not good enough to be even that exact and could be wrong by millions.
Hedges knows firsthand about small species.
He found the world's smallest lizard, a half-inch long Caribbean gecko, while crawling on his hands and knees among dead leaves in the Dominican Republic in 2001. And three years ago in Barbados, he found the world's shortest snake, the 4-inch Caribbean threadsnake that lays "a single, very long egg."
The study's authors point to other species as evidence of the growing rate of discovery: the 6-inch, blind, hairy lobster-type species found in 2005 by a submarine looking at hydrothermal vents near where the Pacific meets Antarctica and a brilliant-colored frogfish found by divers in Indonesia in 2008.
Of the 1.9 million species found thus far, only about 1.2 million have been listed in the fledgling online Encyclopedia of Life, a massive international effort to chronicle every species that involves biologists, including Wilson.
If the 8.8 million estimate is correct, "those are brutal numbers," said Encyclopedia of Life executive director Erick Mata. "We could spend the next 400 or 500 years trying to document the species that actually inhabit our planet."
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Online:
Census of Marine Life: www.coml.org
Encyclopedia of Life: www.eol.org
Scientists: Humans are one in 8.7 million - Researchers attempt a head count of the planet's species 24 August 2011
In the most precise guestimate in history, scientists have narrowed down the number of species in the world to 8.7 million — give or take 1.3 million.
This is pretty good going, given that previous attempts at counting up the different organisms put the number at anywhere between 3 and 100 million.
Astonishingly perhaps, the vast majority of species have yet to be discovered.
A Canadian-led research team, who's findings were published in the journal PLoS Biology, said that only 14 percent of the world's species had been documented.
The Vancouver Sun reports that while fewer than a million animal species are classified, the study's authors have put to bed theories of sea monsters and bigfoots.
Professor Sina Adl, of Dalhousie University in Halifax, said most of the species that are unknown are the smaller or “microscopic ones” — far less interesting than a hairy monster.
The BBC said that cataloguing the various species is thirsty work, and could take more than 1,000 years – adding that many species will become extinct before they can be studied. Biologist EO Wilson put the figure at about 30,000 a year, or three species lost every hour.
So how did scientists arrive at the ball park figure of 8.7 million? The number comes from first examining the relationship between existing species, and then their broader groupings.
So, compare the discovery rate of new species, and genuses, with the discovery rate of higher groups such as phyla, class and order. This information is then used it to predict the number of species in the world.
Says Professor Adl: The approach accurately predicted the number of species in several well-studied groups such as mammals, fishes and birds, providing confidence in the method.
About three quarters of all species are land dwellers, while a quarter live in the oceans.
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primeval [From Latin prīmaevus, early in life, prīmus, first, + aevum, age.]
adjective: Belonging to the first or earliest age or ages; original or ancient: a primeval forest.
derivatives: priméval·ly adverb
pri·mor·di·al
[Middle English, from Late Latin prīmōrdiālis, from Latin prīmōrdium, origin, prīmus, first, + ōrdīrī, to begin to weave.]
adjective
Being or happening first in sequence of time; original.
Primary or fundamental: play a primordial role.
Biology Belonging to or characteristic of the earliest stage of development of an organism or a part: primordial cells.
noun A basic principle.
derivatives
primoŕdially adverb
