Rui Cheng, Arong Luo, Michael Orr, Deyan Ge, Zhong'e Hou, Yanhua Qu, Baocheng Guo, Feng Zhang, Zhongli Sha, Zhe Zhao, Mingqiang Wang, Xiaoyu Shi, Hongxiang Han, Qingsong Zhou, Yuanning Li, Xingyue Liu, Chen Shao, Aibing Zhang, Xin Zhou, Chaodong Zhu
How many species of life are there on Earth? This is a question that we want to know but cannot yet answer. Some scholars speculate that the number of species may reach 2.2 billion when considering cryptic diversity and that each morphology-based insect species may contain an average of 3.1 cryptic species. With nearly two million described species, such high estimates of cryptic diversity would suggest that cryptic species are widespread. The development of molecular species delimitation has led to the discovery of a large number of cryptic species, and cryptic biodiversity has gradually entered our field of vision and attracted more attention...
January 23, 2024: Integrative Zoology