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

If you find yourself in a new place on earth it’s likely that that biome exists some where else. If that biome is studied relentlessly and it is known that it has 20 species in it then its a pretty safe bet that the new place has 20 odd too.

You can also infer the existence of species from other species.

Imagine you find a forest and a fox. Now you know foxes don’t eat trees so that implies the existence of another animal that does eat trees and that’s what the fox eats.

Now if you find a forest and a rabbit then that implies a creature that eats the rabbits otherwise the rabbit population would grow unchecked and there would be no trees.