How many species of animals and birds are there in the world

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• Today (May 22) is World Biodiversity Day. In celebration, below is a look at the world’s ten most biodiverse countries as measured by species richness. • This list takes a simplified approach, created a weighted index using five groups of animals — amphibians, birds, fish, mammals, and reptiles — and one group of plants — vascular plants. • One major caveat: The list does not include invertebrates due to paucity of data in many countries. If we were able to include invertebrates, it would further boost tropical countries in the rankings. • Note: the rankings were updated on September 26, 2021. Author’s note: September 26, 2021 update: this list was revised to reflect new data on plant diversity, which slightly affected the order of the rankings of the top ten countries. May 22 has been designated as the “International Day for Biological Diversity” by the United Nations to “increase understanding and awareness of biodiversity issues”. In celebration of World Biodiversity Day, below is a look at the world’s ten most biodiverse countries as measured by species richness. A few caveats before we get to the list. There are many ways to measure biodiversity. This list takes a simplified approach, created a weighted index using five groups of animals — amphibians, birds, fish, mammals, and reptiles — and one group of plants — vascular plants. Each country is ranked by its percentage of species in each group relative to the total global number of species for each group. There are...

reader comments 81 with Just about anywhere you look, Given their ubiquity—and the enjoyment many people get from seeing and cataloging them—birds offer something that sets them apart from other creatures: an abundance of data. Birds are active year-round, they come in many shapes and colors, and they are relatively simple to identify and appealing to observe. Every year around the world, amateur birdwatchers record millions of sightings in databases that are available for analysis. All that monitoring has revealed some sobering trends. Over the last 50 years, North America has lost a third of its birds, studies suggest, and most bird species are in decline. Because birds are indicators of environmental integrity and of how other, less scrutinized species are doing, data like these should be a call to action, says Peter Marra, a conservation biologist and dean of Georgetown University’s Earth Commons Institute. “If our birds are disappearing, then we’re cutting the legs off beneath us,” he says. “We’re destroying the environment that we depend on.” It’s not all bad news for birds: Some species are increasing in number, data show, and dozens have been saved from extinction. Understanding both the steep declines and the success stories, experts say, could help to inform efforts to protect birds as well as other species. The bad news On his daily walks at dawn along a trail that snakes by several reservoirs near his home in central England, Alexander Lees typically sees a var...

bird, (class Aves), any of the more than 10,400 living species unique in having Since earliest times birds have been not only a material but also a cultural resource. Bird figures were created by prehistoric humans in the Various bird attributes, real or imagined, have led to their symbolic use in language as in art. Aesop’s fables abound in bird characters. The Physiologus and its descendants, the

Table of Contents • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Depending on which scientific study you refer to, the number of birds in the world is anywhere between 50 billion and 400 billion. In context, the human population on this planet is about eight billion. Yes, you read that right, that’s in billions. Birds outnumber us many times over. For example, in a study conducted by Gaston, K.J., and Blackburn in 1997, the estimated number of birds was In a more recent study conducted in 2021 (published under the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) citizen bird enthusiasts, scientists, and data analytics professionals got together to put a However, they also hedged their bets by saying that this is a median estimate, and the actual one could be as high as 428 billion! While we may never know for sure what the real number is, one thing is for sure: the biodiversity of the avian kingdom is much more than we would think. In this number-heavy article, we talk about the birds of the world, their types, which species dominate the earth, and why knowing these numbers is important. How Many Species of Bird are in the World? The current scientific consensus on the number of bird species ranges anywhere between 9,000 and 11,000. For example, the PNAS study we cited earlier puts this number at 9,700 wild bird species. According to The However, others disagree. According to the IUCN red list, as quoted by Our World in Data, the number of bird species described to But since it is ha...

November 30, 2022 How many species do we share our planet with? It’s such a basic and fundamental question to understanding the world around us. It’s almost unthinkable that we would not know, or at least have a good estimate, what this number is. But the truth is that it’s a question that continues to escape the world’s taxonomists. An important distinction is how many species we have identified and described, and how many species there actually are. We’ve only identified a small fraction of the world’s species, so these numbers are very different. Before we look at estimates of how many species there are in total, we should also ask the question of how many species we know that we know. Species that we have identified and named. The These figures – particularly for lesser-known groups such as plants or fungi – might be a bit too high. This is because some described species end up being synonyms – the description of already-known species, simply given a separate name. 1 There is a continual evaluation process to remove synonyms (and most are removed eventually), but often species are added at a faster rate than synonyms can be found and removed. 2 To give a sense of how large this effect might be, in a study published in Science, Costello et al. (2013) estimated that around 20% of the described species were undiscovered synonyms (in other words, duplicates). 3 They estimated that the 1.9 million described species at the time was actually closer to 1.5 million unique speci...

To date, at least 40,000 plant species, 427 mammals (e.g. jaguar, anteater and giant otter), 1,300 birds (e.g. harpy eagle, toucan and hoatzin), 378 reptiles (e.g. boa),more than 400 amphibians (e.g. dart poison frog) and around 3,000 freshwater fishes These numbers are dwarfed by estimates for the smaller life forms: just in Brazil, between 96,660 and more than 100,000 invertebrate species have been described by scientists. Why are there so many species? Well, consider life in the Arctic. You are subject to intense climatic conditions (very cold, often windy), food is scarce, and places to hide from predators are hard to find - clearly not the best environment for wildlife to thrive. Now contrast that to the tropics, where the climate is warm (but liveable), prey is plentiful and there are many Over time, these factors have made it possible for species to adapt to different conditions and develop habitat specializations, resulting in the vast species richness of places such as the Amazon Basin. Amazon wildlife: what happens in the wet season? For plants and animals, the seasonal rains that cover parts of the Amazon are a catalytic event; some animals switch diets, while others are suddenly on the move. Here, a turtle will leave the main river and seek the refuge of a pool further inland; further, wading birds migrate north to the upper waters of tributaries. The wet season also affects the timing of animal reproduction. For example, the arthropods, a family of insects, ar...

Table of Contents • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Depending on which scientific study you refer to, the number of birds in the world is anywhere between 50 billion and 400 billion. In context, the human population on this planet is about eight billion. Yes, you read that right, that’s in billions. Birds outnumber us many times over. For example, in a study conducted by Gaston, K.J., and Blackburn in 1997, the estimated number of birds was In a more recent study conducted in 2021 (published under the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) citizen bird enthusiasts, scientists, and data analytics professionals got together to put a However, they also hedged their bets by saying that this is a median estimate, and the actual one could be as high as 428 billion! While we may never know for sure what the real number is, one thing is for sure: the biodiversity of the avian kingdom is much more than we would think. In this number-heavy article, we talk about the birds of the world, their types, which species dominate the earth, and why knowing these numbers is important. How Many Species of Bird are in the World? The current scientific consensus on the number of bird species ranges anywhere between 9,000 and 11,000. For example, the PNAS study we cited earlier puts this number at 9,700 wild bird species. According to The However, others disagree. According to the IUCN red list, as quoted by Our World in Data, the number of bird species described to But since it is ha...

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bird, (class Aves), any of the more than 10,400 living species unique in having Since earliest times birds have been not only a material but also a cultural resource. Bird figures were created by prehistoric humans in the Various bird attributes, real or imagined, have led to their symbolic use in language as in art. Aesop’s fables abound in bird characters. The Physiologus and its descendants, the