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BBC
News Magazine 11 May 05
What we don't know about the world
By Jonathan Duffy
While no corner of earth remains uncharted, there are still millions of
species that have yet to be discovered and documented. The quest to complete
a comprehensive directory of all life on earth goes on.
It's a good job monkeys don't understand us, else you'd fear for the newly
discovered Callicebus aureipalatii . The creature is one of about
30 varieties of titi monkey which can be found in the dense tropical rainforests
of South America. There's Callicebus brunneus (Brown titi), Callicebus
personatus (Masked titi), Callicebus moloch (Dusky titi) and
then there's the new arrival, Callicebus aureipalatii - Golden Palace
titi. This latest species had the dubious fate of being discovered in an
era of strident global capitalism - hence its name, the result of a charity
auction eventually won by the online gambling emporium GoldenPalace.com.
Novelty names aside, though, it's surprising that on a planet which has
been so comprehensively researched, circumnavigated and trampled over there
are still new sorts of primate which have evaded human detection.
Elsewhere, recently, there have been reports of: a new species of fox in
Indonesia; a hitherto unknown "vampire" fish in the Amazon; and a long-lost
ivory-billed woodpecker in the US.
This week, Kew Gardens announced plans to recolonise the globe with the
Woolemi pine a tree that was thought to have died out at least two million
years ago, before it was discovered by accident in 1994 in Australia.
While Mother Nature wrestles with the effects of industrialisation, prompting
fears about extinction rates, there are still huge gaps in our knowledge
about the natural world that surrounds us. In fact, even by conservative
estimates, there are more living species on the planet that haven't been
identified and documented than have.
Stock-take
For 250 years taxonomists - biologists who specialise in identifying
and classifying life - have been busy conducting a sort of stock-take
of the world's seemingly countless species. The current tally, from
the tiniest plankton to the mighty blue whale hovers around the 1.75
million mark.
The task should be completed by 2011, when the catalogue will then
begin to absorb all subsequent discoveries - of which there are many
thousands every year.
In the animal kingdom alone there are 15,000 to 20,000 new species
identified annually. But barring the odd South American monkey, few
of these have the sort of mass appeal that would prompt an online
bidding war for the right to name them. |
THE
KNOWN UNKNOWNS
Carolus Linnaeus established the standard form for cataloguing species
(using Latin names) in 1753
The UN Global Biodiversity Assessment proposed a working estimate
of 13.6m species There are about 830,000 logged insect species, and
50,000 vertebrates But even that's just an estimate.
The Catalogue of Life programme, a UK-US partnership, is consolidating
all the various specie databases around the world, with the aim of
producing a single, definitive directory of life. |
"Over the past 10 to 15 years there have been a host of surprises as we
explore previously inaccessible habitats," says Professor Frank Bisby,
of Species 2000, a partner in the Catalogue of Life project. "High in
the atmosphere, deep in the soil, in the thermal vents on the ocean floor
and within animals themselves, there are new species to be found." He
notes a recent discovery of 200 new species of yeast found living in the
guts of beetles.
The tropics are widely acknowledged as fertile ground for all forms of
life, but only now are biologists starting to seriously explore rainforests
at canopy (treetop) level, and finding new varieties of wildlife.
Oceans too are a rich seam of undocumented life - the Census of Marine
life uncovered 500 new species of fish in the first three years of this
decade. It estimates there could be 10 times more waiting to be logged.
Pioneering spirit
By comparison, the plant world is more familiar. About 75% of the world's
plants have been chronicled, says Simon Owens of the Royal Botanic Gardens
in Kew, and about 2,000 new species are discovered every year.
New Guinea, the world's second biggest island, is viewed with the sort
of pioneering spirit that botanists once had for Madagascar. There's also
a lot of interest in the jungles of central Africa, although civil wars
have hampered further exploration.
Political changes in the old communist world have helped clear a path
for Kew's army of freelance researchers, says Mr Owens, who notes some
beautiful new discoveries of slipper orchids - which have a pouch rather
than a lip - in remote parts of China.
While such discoveries may delight the human eye, the overall challenge
of charting the undiscovered world stretches way into the future.
One study estimates that at the past rate it will take another 1,500 to
15,000 years to complete the global inventory of life.
But the pace is stepping up, says Dr Andrew Polaszek of the International
Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, thanks to the internet, rapid exchange
of high quality images and DNA sequencing - which is faster than the traditional
technique for documenting species.
Barriers
All of which begs one last question - why bother? After all, these unknown
species have existed for thousands, sometimes millions of years without
occupying a line in a notebook.
In a globalised world, says Dr Polaszek, nothing can cross international
barriers without a name and official documentation.Plants
and animals have numerous benefits, such as helping us conquer diseases.
If we don't know something exists, we won't know when it's on the verge
of extinction.
And in a globalised world, species can quickly thrive in areas where there
are no natural predators, killing indigenous life.
The discovery of a species of parasitic wasp (each no more than 1mm in
length) is promising to bring under control a plant killing white fly
on the Canary Islands, says Dr Polaszek. "We're almost there," says Dr
Polaszek. "The wasp has been identified, and shipped over. It's in quarantine
and about to be released any day now."
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