Dr. Oliver Vince, co‑founder of Basecamp Research, explained in an interview that more than 99% of life on Earth is still unknown. Through collaborations with organisations around the world, Basecamp Research has been working to uncover this hidden biodiversity and reports having identified over a million species. In a newly released BBC More or Less podcast, BlueRemediomics’ coordinator Rob Finn discussed these discoveries and what kinds of species they represent.
Rob explains that there are vast numbers of bacteria still undiscovered, possibly around a trillion different species, which is comparable to the number of stars in the Milky Way. These discoveries come from analysing genomes found in environmental samples, made easier as DNA sequencing becomes cheaper and computational methods more powerful.
But how can scientists know that these genomes represent different species?
For animals and plants, several definitions exist, often based on whether organisms can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. Bacteria, however, do not reproduce in the same way, and their large abundance makes it impossible to examine each one individually or define species by physical traits.
Instead, biologists use statistical methods to estimate how many distinct species are represented in the genomic data.
While the exact number is difficult to verify, the estimate of around one million newly identified species based on Basecamp Research’s calculation seems right.