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From: ughenry@sunybcs.UUCP (Henry Neeman)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Isolation and Unique Species
Message-ID: <1757@sunybcs.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 3-Jun-85 18:58:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: sunybcs.1757
Posted: Mon Jun  3 18:58:59 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 4-Jun-85 08:21:46 EDT
References: <217@ihnet.UUCP> <3570013@csd2.UUCP> <964@uwmacc.UUCP>
Organization: SUNY/Buffalo Computer Science
Lines: 30

> >Could someone more knowledgeable than I do me a favor,
> >and compute a rough lower bound for the number of species that have lived
> >in the last 10,000 years.  Since species never evolve :-),
> >they must have *all* been present on the ark.
>  Here is a list of species put out by Ernst Mayr in 1951.
> 
>  Mammals                   3,500
>  Birds                     8,600
>  Reptiles & Amphibians     5,500
>  Fishes                   18,000
>  Tunicates, etc.           1,700
>  Echinoderms               4,700
>  Arthropods              815,000
>  Mollusks                 88,000
>  Worms, etc.              25,000
>  Coelenterates, etc.      10,000
>  Sponges                   5,000
>  Protozoans               15,000
> 					    Dan

Dan, why would you use such old figures?  Recent estimates (1980's, I can't
quote the source [I know that's taboo] but I'm positive of this) put the
number of species of BEETLES at circa THREE MILLION.  This appears to be
a great deal more than the total (one million) of your (Mayr's) figures.

-- 

                     Henry J. Neeman (ughenry@buffalo)

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