See the cited paper by Locey and Lennon (https://doi.org/10.1186/s13062-020-00261-8 https://doi.org/10.1186/s13062-020-00261-8) for a counterargument. The issue

See the cited paper by Locey and Lennon (https://doi.org/10.1186/s13062-020-00261-8 https://doi.org/10.1186/s13062-020-00261-8) for a counterargument. The issue comes down to mathematical modeling of biodiversity and microbiologists are fighting about it. The fact that dozens of new phyla and two entire branches of life were discovered in the past 20 years is not disputed by either side. A good backgrounder on this topic is "Assessing the global phylum level diversity within the bacterial domain: A review", https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jare.2014.10.005 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jare.2014.10.005