• Question: how much species are there in total and which species have the most?

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      Asked by anon-287539 on 8 Mar 2021.
      • Photo: Jesko Koehnke

        Jesko Koehnke answered on 8 Mar 2021:

        That is a great question, because nobody knows, and the number is constantly changing. Scientists discover new species every year – the weird and the wonderful. And of course you have species going extinct.
        As far as I know, the most abundant animal species is krill. Probably because the oceans are so vast that they have lots of room to grow.

      • Photo: Marcel Jaspars

        Marcel Jaspars answered on 9 Mar 2021:

        I can only answer from the marine perspective, but check out http://www.coml.org/

        also worth a look are the https://www.earthbiogenome.org/ and for microorganisms the number of species is a complete unknown – see https://earthmicrobiome.org/

      • Photo: Martin McCoustra

        Martin McCoustra answered on 9 Mar 2021:

        We don’t really know as we keep on finding new species of plants, animals etc.. The more interesting question to think about, is how many species have we lost because of human action that we will never be able to count.

      • Photo: Ane Valera

        Ane Valera answered on 10 Mar 2021:

        I would say nobody knows the exact number, as more and more species are being discovered worldwide and moreover, in some places that haven’t been discovered before. For example, there is data stating that more than the 65% of sea’s life organisms are microscopic! and there is a lot of research going on right now, with thousands of new species being discovered.
        So imagine if we start exploring places not explored before, the number will for sure increase again and again!

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