Simple reason four million rare species are at higher risk of extinction

Four million species are at a higher risk of extinction because of the evolutionary path their ancestors took. And a team of Aussie scientists has discovered when it comes to survival, size does matter.

The Griffith University experts examined 107 bark beetle species across Queensland’s wet tropics. While it’s difficult to find new types of reptile or mammal, rare and unknown insects are all around us and unsurprisingly 58 of the species they collected were yet to be described by science.

After analysing the specimens they concluded those which haven’t been described are generally significantly smaller, less abundant and less widespread. And that’s a problem for those unknown creatures, because conservationists can’t protect lifeforms that they don’t know exist.

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Australia is famous for having the worst mammalian extinction rate in the world, but what’s less known is lesser-known species are frequently vanishing before they can be researched. And that’s more likely to be impacting smaller insects and spiders with restricted home ranges.

How many of the world's five million insects have been described?

Griffith University’s Emeritus Professor Nigel Stork, who led the study into the bark beetles, estimates there are five million species of insect on the planet. So Stork and his colleague, Professor Roger Kitching, wondered why so few had been described.

“Since only one million of these species have been named and described so far in the past 240 years of Linnaean taxonomy, the puzzling question is: Where are the other four million species that have yet to be found and named?,” Stork asked.

“What are they like, what is the likelihood of their discovery and description, and are they more vulnerable to extinction? Our studies reveal that they are smaller, rarer and more difficult to find as well as being more extinction prone"

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Because insects are vanishing around the world at an alarming rate, traditional methods of describing them are thought to be too slow, so the authors of the study are urging scientists to embrace new technologies to speed up the process, including artificial intelligence and DNA analysis.

Their study has been published in the journal Insect Conservation and Diversity.

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