О биоразнообразии
Всё-таки, судя по всему, человекам совесть не даёт спать напропалую. Нет-нет, да и задумываются о том, что не одни в этом мире живут. А вот сколько нас всех и кто вообще среди нас - никто точно не знает. Я думаю, что и не узнает никогда. Но попытаться всё же можно. Вот очередная попытка (внутри ссылка на оригинал):
The latest estimate on how many species there are on Earth
Aug 24th 2011, 15:56 by The Economist online
NOBODY knows how many species exist on Earth, because no one has yet counted them all. All existing estimates are based on statistical guesswork of one sort or another and there is not much consensus: estimates range between 3m and 100m. A paper just published in PLoS Biology uses a novel statistical approach to arrive at a figure of around 8.7m distinct species. But there are some important caveats: it counts only the eukaryotes, that is, critters with relatively complex cells. That means leaving out the bacteria, which are ubiquitous but for which the concept of 'species' is rather problematic, and the archaea, the third great class of Earthly life. So the number arrived at by the researchers almost certainly underestimates the planet's true biological diversity. The method produces some rather curious results, too: it predicts, for instance, that there are over 200 times as many animal species as protozoan ones, which may strike ecologists as rather odd. Still, any effort to quantify ignorance is useful, as Lord May, a former president of the Royal Society, points out in an accompanying commentary: "It is a remarkable testament to humanity’s narcissism that we know the number of books in the US Library of Congress on 1st February 2011 was 22,194,656, but cannot tell you-to within an order of magnitude-how many distinct species of plants and animals we share our world with."
Источник: http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/08/species?fsrc=scn/tw/te/dc/numberofthebeasts
Обратите внимание на порядок нашего знания (согласно источника) о царстве грибов. Практически никакое. А ведь это кладезь. В этом мире грибы (с бактериями) могут всё. Человек только ещё не понял, похоже.
The latest estimate on how many species there are on Earth
Aug 24th 2011, 15:56 by The Economist online
NOBODY knows how many species exist on Earth, because no one has yet counted them all. All existing estimates are based on statistical guesswork of one sort or another and there is not much consensus: estimates range between 3m and 100m. A paper just published in PLoS Biology uses a novel statistical approach to arrive at a figure of around 8.7m distinct species. But there are some important caveats: it counts only the eukaryotes, that is, critters with relatively complex cells. That means leaving out the bacteria, which are ubiquitous but for which the concept of 'species' is rather problematic, and the archaea, the third great class of Earthly life. So the number arrived at by the researchers almost certainly underestimates the planet's true biological diversity. The method produces some rather curious results, too: it predicts, for instance, that there are over 200 times as many animal species as protozoan ones, which may strike ecologists as rather odd. Still, any effort to quantify ignorance is useful, as Lord May, a former president of the Royal Society, points out in an accompanying commentary: "It is a remarkable testament to humanity’s narcissism that we know the number of books in the US Library of Congress on 1st February 2011 was 22,194,656, but cannot tell you-to within an order of magnitude-how many distinct species of plants and animals we share our world with."
Источник: http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/08/species?fsrc=scn/tw/te/dc/numberofthebeasts
Обратите внимание на порядок нашего знания (согласно источника) о царстве грибов. Практически никакое. А ведь это кладезь. В этом мире грибы (с бактериями) могут всё. Человек только ещё не понял, похоже.