Completing Linnaeus's inventory of the Swedish insect fauna: Only 5,000 species left?

PloS One
Fredrik RonquistUlf Gärdenfors

Abstract

Despite more than 250 years of taxonomic research, we still have only a vague idea about the true size and composition of the faunas and floras of the planet. Many biodiversity inventories provide limited insight because they focus on a small taxonomic subsample or a tiny geographic area. Here, we report on the size and composition of the Swedish insect fauna, thought to represent roughly half of the diversity of multicellular life in one of the largest European countries. Our results are based on more than a decade of data from the Swedish Taxonomy Initiative and its massive inventory of the country's insect fauna, the Swedish Malaise Trap Project The fauna is considered one of the best known in the world, but the initiative has nevertheless revealed a surprising amount of hidden diversity: more than 3,000 new species (301 new to science) have been documented so far. Here, we use three independent methods to analyze the true size and composition of the fauna at the family or subfamily level: (1) assessments by experts who have been working on the most poorly known groups in the fauna; (2) estimates based on the proportion of new species discovered in the Malaise trap inventory; and (3) extrapolations based on species abundance...Continue Reading

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Citations

Nov 13, 2020·Biodiversity Data Journal·Dave KarlssonFredrik Ronquist
Jan 13, 2021·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Daniel H Janzen, Winnie Hallwachs
Apr 1, 2021·Biology Letters·Cecilie S SvenningsenAnders P Tøttrup

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