A Boom in Beetles
Jan. 30, 2012
For the sixth year in a row, beetles have topped the inventory of newly identified species (kinds) of plants and animals released annually by the International Institute for Species Exploration at the University of Arizona. During 2009, the period covered by the report, scientists found 3,485 previously unknown species of beetles around the world, according to the 2011 State of Observed Species (SOS). Issued since 2008, the inventory is also described as “A Report Card on Our Knowledge of Earth’s Species.”
Beetles, including 421 new kinds of ground beetles and 288 new kinds of scarabs, made up 35.8 percent of all the newly discovered insects. Insects, in turn, made up about half of the total number of 19,232 newly identified species of plants and animals. The SOS 2012 also listed 41 new living mammal species and seven new kinds of bird. According to the report, the number of species identified by scientists in 2009 is about the twice the total number of species known in the lifetime of Swedish scientist Carolus Linnaeus, who established the modern scientific method of naming plants and animals in the mid-1700′s.
No one knows exactly how many species of plants and animals live on Earth. So far, scientists have classified (grouped) and named more than 1 ½ million kinds of animals. Over half of these are types of insects. Scientists have classified more than 300,000 kinds of beetles alone. But scientists believe there are millions of other species that have not yet been classified. Many other kinds of animals, from dodos to Tyrannosaurus rex, used to live on Earth but have died out. Scientists have found more than 260,000 species of plants so far.
The Institute issues the list to increase public understanding of the biosphere and to illustrate the evolution of life on Earth. The SOS also cites “evolutionary entrepreneurism,” or organisms’ potential for revealing “billions of potential solutions” that could be used by engineers, inventors, and others “to solve problems in new, more effective, and sustainable ways.”
Additional World Book articles:
- A classification of the animal kingdom (table)
- A classification of the plant kingdom (table)
- Classification, Scientific