In an investigation, ecologists stressed that the millions of insects that remain undiscovered and unnamed by researchers are probably more vulnerable to extinction than the designated species.
In Insect Conservation and Diversity, Emeritus Professors Nigel Stork and Roger Kitching of Griffith’s Centre for Planetary Health and Food Security worked with international researchers on a study that analyzed insect species and their prevalence in the wet tropics of Australia.
In the wet tropics of Australia, Professor Stork and the co-authors discovered that, among the 107 beetle species identified, 58 were not described by science.
As expected, the undescribed species were significantly smaller, less abundant and less widespread than the described species, which made them harder to find and more prone to extinction than the designated species.
“In recent years, estimates of the number of insect species that may exist on Earth have ranged from 100 million or more to as few as 2 million,” states Professor Stork.
“A consensual figure of five million species published by me is now frequently used, supported by four different methods for calculating global species richness,” he adds.
“Since only about 1 million of these species have been named and described so far in the last 240 years of Linnaean taxonomy, the intriguing question is: where are the other 4 million species that have not yet been found and named?” he asks.
“What are they like, what is the probability of being discovered and described and whether they are more vulnerable to extinction? Our studies reveal that they are smaller, rarer and harder to find, in addition to being more prone to extinction,” he explains.
Around 20% of the roughly 5 million species of insects on Earth are described, yet insects are underrepresented in protected-area assessments and their decline is globally concerning.
To increase the rates of species description and to prevent most species from going extinct before being named, Professors Stork and Kitching urge taxonomists to use new character systems provided by DNA methods and advances in the rapidly developing field of artificial intelligence.
“The unknown components of tropical insect biodiversity are probably more affected by human-induced environmental changes,” says Professor Kitching.
“If these patterns generalize, what will be the accuracy of assessments of insect decline in the tropics?” he asks.
The study “What can an analysis of Australian tropical rainforest bark beetles suggest about the missing millions of Earth’s insect species?” was published in the journal Insect Conservation and Diversity.
