A study based on the largest analysis of microbial data revealed that the Earth could contain nearly one trillion species, of which 99.999 percent are not yet discovered. This finding was published in the journal the proceedings of the National Academy of Science. It suggests that up till now only one-thousandth of one percent of all the species have been identified.
Jay Lennon, who was one of the study authors from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana said estimating the number of species on Earth is among the great challenges in biology. The scientists combined microbial, plant and animal datasets from different sources like the government, academic and citizen science. This resulted in a largest compilation of its kind. When we consider the net total we find that the data represent more than 5.6 million microscopic as well as non-microscopic species from 35,000 different locations all across the world’s oceans and continents, except Antarctica.
While explaining Lennon said, our study combines the largest available datasets with ecological models and new ecological rules for how biodiversity relates to abundance. This gave us a new and rigorous estimate for the number of microbial species on Earth. He also said that the estimation was based on the universal scaling laws applied to large datasets. During explanation he said that the authors Jay Lennon and Kenneth Locey of Indiana University. Have written that until recently, we’ve lacked the tools to truly estimate the number of microbial species in the natural environment. The advent of new genetic sequencing technology provides a large pool of new information.
