Dear all,
I've been looking at the latest State of Observed Species (SOS) report on name creation statistics. No surprises but surely interesting to see the comparisons across phyla. There were 134 annelids thought to be new described in 2008 (the most recent year for full data). This was 0.74% of the 18,225 total biota described (including plants & fungi), with insects (8,794) comprising over 48% of the total.
There is a nice pdf. See: http://species.asu.edu/SOS
In the sea annelids are usually as important ecologically as molluscs and crustaceans, but overall rather more taxa of those groups were described at 880 and 1014 respectively.
Cheers,
Geoff
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Geoff Read <g.read from niwa.co.nz>
http://www.annelida.net/http://www.niwa.co.nz/about-niwa
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