Researchers from Indiana University say that Earth could become home to one trillion species with only one thousand of one per cent now. The authors of this study are Jay T. Lennon, associate professor in the IU Blooming College of Arts and Sciences Department of Biology, and Kenneth J. Locey, the post-doctoral person in the department.
Microbial, Plant and animal community datasets from a government, academic and citizen science sources that result in largest compilation of its kind are all combined bu IU scientists.
There are about 5.6 million microscopic and nonmicroscopic are the data represented species from 35,000 locations across world`s ocean and continents excluding Antartica. Estimating the number of species on Earth is the great challenge in Biology says, Lennon.
“Our study combines the largest available datasets with ecological models and new ecological rules for how biodiversity relates to abundance. This gave us a new and rigorous estimate for the number of microbial species on Earth,” he added.
Microbial species are all forms of life too small to be seen with naked eye including all single-celled organisms such as bacteria and archaea and certain fungi found the researchers.
Microorganisms are significantly undersampled caused an explosion is a realization in new microbial sampling efforts over past several years. This also includes the collection of human-related microorganisms by National Institutes of Health`s Human Microbiome Project, Microorganisms by under the Tara Oceans Expedition and Aquatic by the Earth microbiome project.
Identifying every species on Earth is an unimaginably huge challenge which is the result of this study. In perspective, the Earth Microbiome project a global multidisciplinary project to identify these organisms so far cataloged less than 10 million species.