Global: World species list under review
20.09.10
Juliette Jowit reported on Guardian.co.uk yesterday that the world plant species list is undergoing a massive cull. More than 600,000 records will probably be deleted from the database of life because they are duplicates, or not 'new'.
Nailing down the true number of species is crucial to achieving Target 1 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC), which is "a widely accessible working list of all known plant species, as a step towards a complete world flora". This recent work should bring the known number of flowering plants down to about 400,000 species, which fits many recent estimates including Paton et al 2008, who estimated 352,000.
The classification and naming of many species is open to huge amounts of debate. Juniperus (pictured is Juniperus communis ), for example, is a genus with a raft of different species, sections, varieties, and sub-species to argue over.
Many of the comments on the Guardian story are strangely negative, but surely this isn't too damming for Linnaeus's 350 year old system, which has had disparate scientists adding entries for centuries, with little ability to communicate with other like-minded souls around the world.
The re-calculation is also timely. As Nagoya's Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting fast approaches, and with global biodiversity targets still failing to be met, it's important that there are some success stories to be reported.
Related links:
Global: How many plants out there need saving?
07.07.10
A very interesting article (free access) appeared today in Proceedings of Royal Society B. Carrying the title "How many species of flowering plants are there?" the content wasn't exactly what I was expecting.
Launch of Global Biodiversity Outlook (GB0-3)
12.05.10
"The news is not good," said Ahmed Djoglaf, Executive Secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) on the release of the third Global Biodiversity Outlook (GB0-3).
IUCN: Forget the banks, bail out nature
07.05.10
Never has the world faced a more pressing crisis than the current loss of biodiversity, which affects every man, woman and child. The gap between the pressure on our natural resources and governments’ response to the deterioration is widening. IUCN is calling for governments to come up with a “bailout plan,” a 10-year strategy that will help countries halt and reverse this loss.
Global: Failing biodiversity targets
30.04.10
A new report in the journal Science shows commitments made in 2002 by world leaders to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss have failed and instead we are continuing to see declines.