How do you know that 90% of species are undiscovered if they are undiscovered? how do you know they are there if you haven’t discovered them yet?

Question

Everyone keeps saying its like a list, how does that work?? Do you have like a pokedex where the undiscovered species appear in grey or something like that???

In: Biology

Answer 1

Matt Parker did a video about this not too long ago, but when you’re studying a new region you can use mathematical tools to help predict how many species are still undiscovered in that region. The idea is pretty simple. You go out on the first day and likely most of the animals you find will be new species. You go out the next day and you’ll still find new species, but you’ll also see animals that you discovered previously.

If you repeat this enough times the ratio of new species to previously known species will steadily decrease. You can plot that decline on a graph and use that to figure out how many total species are in that area.