C. Assessment Of Biodiversity
The World Museum and Scientific Institution records close to 1.75 million species of plants, animals and microorganisms which have been catalogued and stored in collections. But, these numbers represent in our most conservative calculations, something between 8% and 15% of estimated species living on Earth. Some people estimate that this total can go up to maybe 100 million species. The thing is that we don't know and I don't think we are ever going to know. We might not even try to know that much and concentrate our efforts more in trying to understand how these organisms function in the systems of which they form parts. Even habitats, which were once thought to be of little or no importance from the point of view of biological diversity, like the marine or fresh water sediments are being discovered to possess high species richness. Additionally, very little of the scientifically catalogued information is indexed electronically, and virtually nothing (maybe 1%) is widely accessible. For example, only a minute fraction of the known species has been studied in any detail to understand aspects of their physiology or chemistry.
So, all that effort to find out how many species there are - putting them into museums has not resulted in having wide access for that information, which is I think terrible. We should examine those institutions which have worked hard towards that end. It is not surprising to realize that an extremely minute fraction of the enormous number of species has been studied in enough detail to understand their physiology, or chemistry or behavior or their use to mankind. The effect of this doesn't equal that of biological diversity.
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Narrative Index
BioForum Index
