CAN LIFE ON EARTH BE COMPLETELY DESCRIBED OR DOES TAXONOMY HAVE LIMITS?
There are between 4 and 10 million species in the world, but fewer than 20% have been named and described. In 2000, the ALL Species Foundation called for the discovery, identification, and description of all the remaining species within 25 years!
At our May meeting, Dr Dan Bickel (Australian Museum) used the example of some families of flies to demonstrate the futility of this goal. Even in Europe, where flies have been studied and described for over 250 years, new species are still being discovered. In most other regions, the fly fauna is poorly known and intensive surveys within small geographic areas have yielded high diversity, suggesting there are many more species to be discovered. The small pool of fly taxonomists cannot hope to survey and describe all the flies in the world. Likewise other insect groups. Dan concluded that this lack of knowledge is not necessarily a bad thing. If major ecosystems are conserved in reserves large enough to protect the diversity of better-known animals such as birds, the diversity of flies and other invertebrates would also be protected.
This talk wasn’t aired on ZOOM and is ∴ unavailable on OFF’s YouTube channel
Promo
Dr Dan Bickel (Australian Museum Senior Fellow).
There are between 4 and 10 million species in the world, but fewer than 20% have been named and described. Is it possible to describe all life on Earth? Some large groups of animals occur across continents and contain many species not yet identified or collected. An example is true flies, the order Diptera: (from the Greek: di = two, ptera = wings).
In this well-illustrated talk, Dan will compare the well-known fly fauna of Europe with the flies of some other regions where they have not been studied nearly as extensively. He will discuss the hurdles to describing all species and what may actually be out there.