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I'm confused. There are about 40,000 known species of vertebrate. There were 18,000 NEW species of life in general discovered in 2016 alone (http://www.latimes.

by rrggrr 9y ago

I'm confused. There are about 40,000 known species of vertebrate. There were 18,000 NEW species of life in general discovered in 2016 alone (http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-new-spec... http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-new-spec...). It's estimated there are more than 8 million species of plant, animal and insect life on the earth. Population decline doesn't equal extinction. So how, pray tell, do we find ourselves in a mass extinction event when less than half of vertebrate species are in decline, less than 1% of species in general are in decline, and when we're still discovering new species and adaptations by existing species every year?

darod 9y ago
population decline != extinction but that is the direction that it's going. There's a huge problem when one population is increasing (i.e. humans) and everything else is declining. We can't invent a robot for every job that animals occupy in nature.
- acjohnson55 9y ago
  There are other species thriving as well, largely due to human activity. This is because of decimation of their predators, elimination of competitors, or introduction to new environments where they are more fit than indigenous species. But global biodiversity appears to be in a nosedive.
flippyhead 9y ago
I wouldn't use recent increases in species discover to hide this trend, we're a lot better at discovering and (re) classifying species nowadays and there's a lot more people around (and going into remote areas) to notice new species.
novia 9y ago
I cannot read your link (the url is incomplete) and I cannot read the OP's link (site overloaded perhaps) but when we discover 18000 new species of life that does not mean that they did not exist before we discovered them. My best guess is that there are several species that we already did know about that have gone extinct. Here's a depressing wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_extinctions_in_the_Holocene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_extinctions_in_the... It's possible that there are species that have gone extinct as a result of human activity that we never even knew existed. So scientists make approximations to the extent of the damage we are causing. Because of the decline in the populations of species we are aware of, it seems like we will be adding many more species to that wikipedia page soon. Here is a link to a CNN story with a similar headline for those of you unable to see the OP's story like me: http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/11/world/sutter-mass-extinction-ceballos-study/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/11/world/sutter-mass-extinction-c...
laughinghan 9y ago
Species exist whether they've been discovered yet or not. According to this article, scientists believe they're going extinct at rates resembling an ongoing extinction event rather than stable periods. The rate at which species are being assigned names by humans is irrelevant.
marze 9y ago
Look at two numbers: Square km of non-desert wilderness vs human agriculture. Mass of all domestic animals vs mass of wild animals. Gives a sense of the problem. Or, the complete disruption of ocean ecosystems by over fishing, killing of top predators, fertilizer runoff, and so on.
justin66 9y ago
Your comment wasn't good enough to lazily copy and paste from that other thread. I mean, it's even got a broken URL. > we're still discovering new species Just an observation: this has literally nothing to do with how many species exist in the world. If you're interested in finding something to comfort yourself about with regard to current high rate of extinctions, this isn't it. You'd have to observe the birth of new species. (your link is broken. Does it contain a scientifically credible claim that new species are being born at the rate that old ones are going extinct?)

by rrggrr 9y ago

darod 9y ago

population decline != extinction but that is the direction that it's going. There's a huge problem when one population is increasing (i.e. humans) and everything else is declining. We can't invent a robot for every job that animals occupy in nature.

acjohnson55 9y ago
There are other species thriving as well, largely due to human activity. This is because of decimation of their predators, elimination of competitors, or introduction to new environments where they are more fit than indigenous species. But global biodiversity appears to be in a nosedive.

flippyhead 9y ago

I wouldn't use recent increases in species discover to hide this trend, we're a lot better at discovering and (re) classifying species nowadays and there's a lot more people around (and going into remote areas) to notice new species.

novia 9y ago

I cannot read your link (the url is incomplete) and I cannot read the OP's link (site overloaded perhaps) but when we discover 18000 new species of life that does not mean that they did not exist before we discovered them. My best guess is that there are several species that we already did know about that have gone extinct. Here's a depressing wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_extinctions_in_the_Holocene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_extinctions_in_the... It's possible that there are species that have gone extinct as a result of human activity that we never even knew existed. So scientists make approximations to the extent of the damage we are causing. Because of the decline in the populations of species we are aware of, it seems like we will be adding many more species to that wikipedia page soon. Here is a link to a CNN story with a similar headline for those of you unable to see the OP's story like me: http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/11/world/sutter-mass-extinction-ceballos-study/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/11/world/sutter-mass-extinction-c...

laughinghan 9y ago

Species exist whether they've been discovered yet or not. According to this article, scientists believe they're going extinct at rates resembling an ongoing extinction event rather than stable periods. The rate at which species are being assigned names by humans is irrelevant.

marze 9y ago

Look at two numbers: Square km of non-desert wilderness vs human agriculture. Mass of all domestic animals vs mass of wild animals. Gives a sense of the problem. Or, the complete disruption of ocean ecosystems by over fishing, killing of top predators, fertilizer runoff, and so on.

justin66 9y ago

Your comment wasn't good enough to lazily copy and paste from that other thread. I mean, it's even got a broken URL. > we're still discovering new species Just an observation: this has literally nothing to do with how many species exist in the world. If you're interested in finding something to comfort yourself about with regard to current high rate of extinctions, this isn't it. You'd have to observe the birth of new species. (your link is broken. Does it contain a scientifically credible claim that new species are being born at the rate that old ones are going extinct?)