As many as 42 percent of the fish found in the Amazon River are thought to remain unknown to science.
How do they get that number lol.
I think you can do math about the rate at which you discover new species when pulling out random samples of fish in comparison to the amount of fish species you already found: if you have very few of the species discovered a random sample of fish would yield almost only new species. If you have a high amount discovered you'd get almost no new fish in your sample. Idk the formulas used tho sorry. I saw a video of this with moths species at some point, i think by Matt Parker. There was also recently a numberphile video about catching Pokémon that can probably extrapolated into making a formula for that stuff.
Ah if there’s a stand up maths video on it I will watch it PRONTO! Thank you very much. My question was more a joke about how they somehow have a maximum in their quote “as many as”, when I would think it would be a minimum.
A community about the variety of life on Earth at all levels; including plants, animals, bacteria, and fungi.
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Biodiversity is a term used to describe the enormous variety of life on Earth. It can be used more specifically to refer to all of the species in one region or ecosystem. Biodiversity refers to every living thing, including plants, bacteria, animals, and humans. Scientists have estimated that there are around 8.7 million species of plants and animals in existence. However, only around 1.2 million species have been identified and described so far, most of which are insects. This means that millions of other organisms remain a complete mystery.
Over generations, all of the species that are currently alive today have evolved unique traits that make them distinct from other species. These differences are what scientists use to tell one species from another. Organisms that have evolved to be so different from one another that they can no longer reproduce with each other are considered different species. All organisms that can reproduce with each other fall into one species. Read more...
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