La biodiversidad tiene buena salud

La Tierra contiene cerca de 1 billón de especies, el 99,9% por descubrir 

SCIENCE DAILY.- Earth could contain nearly 1 trillion species, with only one-thousandth of 1 percent now identified, according to a study from biologists at Indiana University.

The estimate, based on the intersection of large datasets and universal scaling laws, appears May 2 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study's authors are Jay T. Lennon, associate professor in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences' Department of Biology, and Kenneth J. Locey, a postdoctoral fellow in the department.

The IU scientists combined microbial, plant and animal community datasets from government, academic and citizen science sources, resulting in the largest compilation of its kind. Altogether, these data represent over 5.6 million microscopic and nonmicroscopic species from 35,000 locations across all the world's oceans and continents, except Antarctica.

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