Like many people, it is easy to assume that our planet has been well explored. Over the past few centuries, humans have reached the highest peak of the planet, dived to the deepest trench, and hiked to the Arctic and Antarctic, recording the diversity of life along the way – many birds, butterflies, fish and other creatures, with which we share our great planet.
Nowadays, life on Earth is well known.
The more scientists study the biodiversity of the planet, the more they realize that we know very little. They estimate that for each species we find, there may be at least nine more, which are still undiscovered or unknown, meaning that about 90% of life on Earth is unknown.
This does not include big things – black bears, white bears and vultures, all with scientific names and descriptions published in academic journals. What is unknown is composed of small creatures such as insects, mites and crustaceans. These species are nuts and bolts of the ecosystem: they produce soil, pollinate crops and feed almost everything. And most have not been determined yet.
For example, in just one Fly family called Cecidomyiidae, scientists estimate how many may be 1.8 million species worldwidebut less than 7,000 were described. This is particularly noteworthy given the total number of species described throughout the animal kingdom is about 2 million.
Biologists describe such animals as dark taxa, the term refers to organisms that are not described or undiscovered in most species. Some taxonomists also call them biology Dark matter.
“Most people think that life on Earth is a description of life on Earth, and we have a good understanding of the functioning of ecosystems,” said Emily Hartop, a flight researcher and taxonomist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. “The reality is that for most species on Earth, we don’t know what they are, we don’t know where they are, we don’t know what they are, we don’t know what they are doing. They are unknown.”
University of Guelph Biodiversity Genome Center
University of Guelph Biodiversity Genome Center
University of Guelph Biodiversity Genome Center
University of Guelph Biodiversity Genome Center
Scientists who study dark taxons believe that lifting the shadow on these organisms is crucial to our own survival. If we don’t know what constitutes our ecosystem, we have the potential to kill the main players that make them work, or fail to identify potential threats, such as an insect that could trigger the next global pandemic.
Berlin-based researcher Rudolf Meier Natural History Museum Humboldt University in Berlin also studies the Dark Tax.
Hartop and some other researchers devoted their careers to exposing the dark taxa to keep the planet unknown. But filling these gaps is a difficult task and has only recently been considered impossible. The challenge boils down to process: How do you identify millions of tiny (usually the same species) and lack the traditional charm of funding adventures?
Dark Classification Biologists Where Can Hundreds of New Species Find
More than a decade ago, when Hartop lived in Los Angeles, she and her colleagues built bug traps in the backyards of the city. They are mesh tents with openings called discomfort traps. Once the buzzing sounds, they get stuck and navigate (for them unfortunately) into a bottle of ethanol. Ethanol can kill and retain animals.
In just one year, the trap collected 99 species of sled flies, small insects from the phoridae family, and looked a lot like fruit flies in my untrained eyes. 43 of these species are A newbie in science And it has never been described.
When scientists search for dark taxa, they seem to find new species everywhere. Meier and his colleagues recently collected fungi in Singapore and their trap reveals 120 types. No one knows science except four or five. When researchers searched for wasps that parasitize other insects in Costa Rica, they found 416 species. more than 400 It has not been described.
The chances of discovery are beyond the animal world. the scientist Recently analyzed The genetic code of fungal specimens from thousands of exophageal species – a fungus that forms a symbiotic relationship with plant roots – was found to match only 20% of the codes of these codes matched known species.
Why have these creatures been ignored for so long? The reason, Mell said, is that they are usually small and usually weigh less than 5 mm in size. This makes their incredible attention even more incredible and less exciting by traditional standards.
“The funder is more likely to give you money for birds and butterflies because it’s something more relevant to the funder who is not a biologist,” Mel told me. “If I want to make money on the Dark Tax, I have to cover these biases first.”
However, the bigger obstacle is that these living groups are very diverse. There are three species of elephants and eight species of bears. Meanwhile, there may be one million Scutle Fly globally, Hartop said.
This can cause scale issues. Although bugs in tents are easy, it is difficult to identify them and prove that they are different from other species already described. Until recently, this was nearly impossible.
We are in the golden age of discovery
For hundreds of years, scientists have largely classified animals by their appearance. toucan is obviously different from Robin, and Robin is obviously different from Hummingbird. Scientists use these distinctions in form to separate animals from species to species, often defined as organisms that reproduce from each other but not from other animal groups.
Research on forms (called morphology) is also used to categorize small things, such as moths and butterflies. But for some animal groups, such as flies, mites and nematodes – this method is insufficient. Although these animals can often be distinguished by appearance, it often requires a lot of time and expertise. Literally, scientists must look at them one by one through a microscope. Also, the appearance can be deceptive: a bunch of Black and blue butterflies It may look the same, but comes from different genetic lineages, making them different species.
That’s why a technology called DNA sequencing is a game-changer. In the 1970s, scientists figured out how to sequence a portion of the organism’s DNA, resulting in a string of letters corresponding to its genes. They later discovered that they could only use a small fragment of the sequence to tell a species, except for one species. In 2003, a Canadian biologist named Paul Hebert is known as These fragments are “barcodes” because they are unique species IDs, similar to those on grocery store cereal boxes.
Over time, scientists sequenced the animals and uploaded their barcodes to a database to help organize and reorganize the animal kingdom. Technology has been developing all the time. DNA sequencing is now so advanced that taxonomists – those who classify life – can list thousands of specimens at once.
It is this approach that helps elucidate the dark taxa: researchers can collect dozens of specimens, sequence parts of sequence DNA from the field, and then upload these code bits to an existing database to see if they match known species. If not, they might represent something new.
Even with modern DNA sequencing, it is still very difficult to clearly identify unknown lives. One big problem is that most species that scientists have described do not have barcodes. Museums may have physical specimens – moths or beetles in drawers in basements – lack of genetic data in online databases. So sorting discoveries is often not enough to prove that science is new.
Be a scientist yes Be sure they have found something new and they will face other challenges if they want to formally describe the animal and give it a scientific name. This often requires a variety of evidence and descriptions published in scientific journals. For dark taxa (again thousands of unknown species), this will be very time-consuming. (world Taxonomy is full of drama About the species naming process and how much evidence is needed to provide scientists. It is really important to see whether formally named species already have unique DNA sequences that can identify them. )
Nevertheless, modern DNA sequencing has greatly enhanced the process of discovering and identifying life. It’s very extraordinary: Even though we’ve learned about the most obvious species around us for hundreds of years, we’re only in the golden age of species discovery.
“It’s incredible,” said Herbert, a professor at the University of Guelph in Ontario, who runs the Biodiversity Genome Center at the DNA-Barcoding Research Center. “This is the era of biological discovery.”
Can we describe all life on Earth?
That’s the goal. Although there are no reliable estimates for the total number of species on Earth, it may be tens of millions. Likewise, only about 2 million people have been described formally, Herbert said.
Before modern sequencing becomes a reality, it will take millions of years to identify all life on Earth, and may even cost trillions of dollars. Now, some scientists believe they can do this in decades or even years.
In 2005, Hebert and his colleague Sujeevan Ratnasingham launched a project that was actually trying to collect DNA data for every animal on Earth. Herbert said that so far, the project (called the barcode of life) has sequences of about 1.5 million species, although many of them are not formally described. He told me confidently that the rest would not require more than $1 billion. The money will help fund adventures and DNA sequencing around the world.
“We want barcode records for every species,” Herbert said. “If I can convince the world to support this for about $1 billion, it’s trivial, and we can complete the list of animal life by 2040, I’m sure.”
Hebert and other taxonomists imagine a world in which all species are well known and therefore can be traced. Just as we monitor the weather of imminent disasters, a complete list of animal life can allow scientists to monitor biodiversity (things that are both obvious and obscure) to understand the changes in our ecosystems and what they mean to us. Do we rely on a shrinking marine food chain? Do insect larvae that make our soil fertile descend? Are the pathogens loose?
But there is a more noble reason to discover life, he said. “This is the planet we live in,” Herbert said. “We really should know the creatures we share with.”
And, if you have a billion dollars around you, you can obviously help.
“For billionaires, it’s effortless,” Herbert said. “It’s the legacy of that person. You can only do it once: Discover life on our planet.”
