Numbers of species

Undiscovered and discovered species

Bearing in mind the aforementioned problems with categorising species, the following numbers are only a soft guide. They break down as follows:^[13]

Total number of species (estimated): 7–100 millions (identified and unidentified), including:

• 5–10 million bacteria^[14];
• 74,000–120,000 fungi^[15];

Of the identified eukaryote species we have:

• 1.6 million, including:
  • 297,326 plants, including:
    • 15,000 mosses,
    • 13,025 Ferns and horsetails,
    • 980 gymnosperms,
    • 258,650 angiosperms,
      • 199,350 dicotyledons,
      • 59,300 monocotyledons,
    • 9,671 Red and green algae,
  • 28,849 fungi & other non-animals, including:
    • 10,000 lichens,
    • 16,000 mushrooms,
    • 2,849 brown algae,
  • 1,250,000 animals, including:
    • 1,203,375 invertebrates:
      • 950,000 insects,
      • 81,000 mollusks,
      • 40,000 crustaceans,
      • 2,175 corals,
      • 130,200 others;
    • 59,811 vertebrates:
      • 29,300 fish,
      • 6,199 amphibians,
      • 8,240 reptiles,
      • 9,956 birds,
      • 5,416 mammals.

At present, organisations such as the Global Taxonomy Initiative, the European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy and the Census of Marine Life^[16] (the latter only for marine organisms) are trying to improve taxonomy and implement previously undiscovered species to the taxonomy system. Due to the fact that we know but a portion of the organisms in the biosphere, we do not have a complete understanding of the workings of our environment. To make matters worse, despite the discovery of new species, according to professor James Mallet, we are wiping out these species at an unprecedented rate. ^[17]This means that even before a new species has had the chance of being studied and classified, it may already be extinct.