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Scientific effort to log all living species tops 1-million

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published April 9, 2007

WASHINGTON - A worldwide scientific effort to catalog every living species has topped the 1-million milestone.

Six years into the program, the total has reached 1,009,000, researchers report. They hope to complete the listing by 2011, reaching an expected total of about 1.75-million species.

Thomas M. Orrell, a biologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, said the finished catalog will include all known living organisms, from plants and animals to fungi and microorganisms such as bacteria, protozoa and viruses. The listing does not include fossil species from the past.

The Integrated Taxonomic Information System-Species 2000 Catalog of Life provides access to data maintained by a variety of scientific organizations, each specializing in a certain area.

For example, information on dipteran flies is maintained by the Agriculture Department's Systematic Entomology Laboratory at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

Natural history museums in London, Netherlands and New York maintain clothes moth, dragonfly and spider data. Experts in Canada and Paris keep the data on Ichneumon wasps and longhorn beetles.

To search the database, go to www.catalogueoflife.org.

[Last modified April 9, 2007, 01:33:42]