The tree of life continues to expand: 700 new genera are described every year

This does not mean that global biodiversity is no longer threatened by the impact of human beings, but rather that its knowledge, on the part of the scientific community, continues to advance. Instead of contracting with recent species extinctions, the tree of life continues to expand, the authors say.

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This is the main conclusion of a study led by researchers at the University of Arizona, in the United States, who warn that many new clades (groups of organisms that share a common ancestor and all their descendants) remain undiscoveredy Describing them before they become extinct should be a priority for conservation.

Scientific knowledge about global biodiversity remains incomplete, the authors note.

The loss of entire clades and their phylogenetic diversity has attracted considerable attention, yet little is known about the gain of new ones based on newly discovered species.

To advance in this field, the team led by John Wiens, from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona, analyzed data between 2015 and 2020.

The team combed through large taxonomic databases (containing millions of species) to determine the number of new genera, families, orders and classes each year. Next, reviewed thousands of scientific articles to determine which ones were based entirely on new species, Wiens explains to EFE.

Once the exploration was completed, the scientists concluded that the known tree of life has continued to expand.

The new genera are dominated by animals such as arthropods (79%), while new families, orders and classes are microbes.

“Overall, we suggest that the known tree of life continues to expand rapidly with many newly discovered clades, and is not just contracting with recent extinctions.”write the authors in their article published in the journal PNAS.

And they add: discovering and describing these new clades before they disappear should be an urgent research priority.

This is important, among others, because many newly described organisms are in danger of extinctiondetalla Wiens.

Furthermore, they may include new chemical compounds that can be turned into new medicines and other products that can benefit humanity.

José Prenda, professor of Zoology in the Department of Integrated Sciences at the University of Huelva (Spain), who is not involved in this study, says that current estimates of the value of global biodiversity are 8.75 million species.

An implication “very notable of this work, of great importance”is that it considerably increases this data.

The acceleration in the description of different taxonomic levels, from species to class, should force us to review the calculations for calculating planetary biodiversity, which would be much higher than estimated. “probably tens, if not hundreds of millions of species”points to Science Media Center Spain, a platform of scientific resources for journalists.