1 million species catalogued
Blue Morpho butterfly uploaded by Lionoche
As a librarian, I can never resist a ‘catalogue’ bit.
The Species 2000 & ITIS Catalogue of Life, a worldwide scientific effort to catalogue all living species, has reportedly reached the 1 million milestone. The 7th edition of their Annual Checklist now contains 1,008,965 species – a number that probably represents just over half of the world’s known species.
The list, likely to be completed by 2011, is expected to reach a total of nearly 1.75 million species. The final catalogue will include all known living organisms - from plants and animals to fungi and microorganisms such as bacteria, protozoa and viruses. The catalogue does not include fossil species from the past.
The Integrated Taxonomic Information System-Species 2000 Catalog of Life provides access to data maintained by several scientific organisations, each specialising in a certain area. The US Agriculture Department’s Systematic Entomology Laboratory at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History maintains information on dipteran flies. Natural history museums in London, the Netherlands and New York maintain clothes moth, dragonfly and spider data. Experts in Canada and Paris keep the data on Ichneumon wasps and longhorn beetles. These lists have been peer-reviewed and checked technically before they were integrated into the catalogue.
The project, involving 3,000 biologists, is led by Frank Bisby of the University of Reading in England and Orrell. It is supported by the US Geological Survey’s National Biological Information Infrastructure.
For more information or to browse or search the catalog, see: http://www.catalogueoflife.org/search.php
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