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number of taxons
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Posted by gillmass 5a (My Page) on Fri, Oct 16, 09 at 14:27
could someone give me an estimated number of families, orders and genera extant in the world today.
thanks. |
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RE: number of taxons
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- Posted by brandon7 6b (like 7b now) TN (My Page) on
Tue, Oct 20, 09 at 11:59
| Any answer you get is going to have about as many caveats as the number of species. Basically, no one knows. The actually scientifically classified species and genera only represent a small part of the actual ones in existence. It might seem that when you step up to the family classification or above, that things would get simpler, but unfortunately, it only gets more complex at that level with mass changes on practically a daily basis. We haven't come close to counting the number of species, and are barely even getting started on trying to understand their relationships to each other. Here are some quick google results that might shed some light on your question: The estimated number of animals on our planet falls somewhere in the vast range of 3-30 million species (Erwin 1983, Wolosz 1988). (see link below) The National Science Foundation’s "Tree of Life" project estimates that there could be anywhere from 5 million to 100 million species on the planet, but science has only identified about 2 million. (Life Science, http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/070803_gm_numberspecies.html ) |
Here is a link that might be useful: How Many (Animal) Species Inhabit Our Planet
RE: number of taxons
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thanks for your response. do you think i would have more success if i narrowed my question to--how many orders, families and genera are there in the cronquist classification system?
what puzzles me further is that i can go to a genus and learn how many species there are or go to a family and determine how many genera there are in it but no answer for how many overall families, orders or genera there are.i'm only interested in plants not animals. how about some good old fashioned guessing? anyone? |
RE: number of taxons
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| Based on what I have on hand I would guess about 150 orders of plants. Families and genera are going to be considerably higher. Someone who has access to a complete database would be able to give a pretty accurate number in a minimal amount of time. I don't have access to such a database though. |
RE: number of taxons
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- Posted by brandon7 6b (like 7b now) TN (My Page) on
Wed, Oct 28, 09 at 10:02
| "How many (known and generally accepted) orders, families, and genera (of angiosperms) are there in the Cronquist classification system?" If you limit your search to that degree, Wikipedia reports,"The (Cronquist) system, as laid out in An Integrated System of Classification of Flowering Plants (1981), counts 321 families and 64 orders." |
RE: number of taxons
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| Though of course Cronquist is very out-of-date and not much used any more . . . Resin |
RE: number of taxons
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Hi
Only family I even remotely keep up with is orchids and last I heard they still are the most diverse most lists say around 30,000 specie 2000 natural hybrids. 60,000 man made
with over 200 man made genus. While I recently heard of 150 new species within the last 5 years no new genus.
Of couse if your reading is over a week old you'll find somebody somewhere revising everything all over again lol.
can't imagine actually counting animal species .I'd bet money plants will prove impossible even if you stick to flowering plants alone. gary
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RE: number of taxons
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| my final estimate is: orders: 100 +/-
families: 400 +/_
genera: 15,000 +/-
species: 250,000 +/- would love to hear an opposing view. |
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