The DOI matches its Crossref record; 1 of the 1 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Global species richness estimates have not converged
Abstract
We demonstrate that after more than six decades, estimates of global species richness have failed to converge, remain highly uncertain, and in many cases, are logically inconsistent. Convergence in these estimates could be accelerated by adaptive learning methods where the estimation of uncertainty is prioritised and used to guide future research.
Overview
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Uncertainties in the numbers of animal and plant species and the percentage of them (particularly insects) that are threatened make any estimate necessarily approximate.
“Uncertainties in the numbers of animal and plant species and the percentage of them (particularly insects) that are threatened make any estimate necessarily approximate ( 50 , 51 ).”
From Pervasive human-driven decline of life on Earth points to the need for transformative change (2019) · cites this paper as [50]
Citations
Cites
Handbook of Meta-analysis in Ecology and Evolution
(2013) · doi:10.1515/9781400846184 · Cited by 1,183
Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 7
- May, 1992, How many species inhabit the earth?, Sci. Am., 267, 18, 10.1038/scientificamerican1092-42 · DOI
- Stork, 1993, How many species are there?, Biodivers. Conserv., 2, 215, 10.1007/BF00056669 · DOI
- May, 2002, The future of biological diversity in a crowded world, Curr. Sci., 82, 1325
- Costello, 2013, Can we name Earth's species before they go extinct?, Science, 339, 413, 10.1126/science.1230318 · DOI
- Erwin, 1991, How many species are there?: Revisited, Conserv. Biol., 5, 330, 10.1111/j.1523-1739.1991.tb00145.x · DOI
- Hamilton, 2013, Estimating global arthropod species richness: refining probabilistic models using probability bounds analysis, Oecologia, 171, 357, 10.1007/s00442-012-2434-5 · DOI
- Fisher, 2012, A software tool for elicitation of expert knowledge about species richness or similar counts, Environ. Model. Softw., 30, 1
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Pervasive human-driven decline of life on Earth points to the need for transformative change
Díaz, S., Settele, J., Brondízio, E. S., Ngo, H. T., Agard, J., Arneth, A., Balvanera, P., Brauman, K. A., Butchart, S. H. M., Chan, K. M. A., et al. (2019) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.aax3100 · Cited by 2,926
Metadata
- Authors
- Caley, M. J., Fisher, R., & Mengersen, K.
- Affiliations
- Australian Institute of Marine Science (AU)
- Queensland University of Technology (AU)
- Venue
- Trends in Ecology & Evolution
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2014-04
- Volume
- 29
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 187-188
- ISSN
- 0169-5347 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2047487271
- Cited by
- 81
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 15 · 2016: 9 · 2015: 10 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 10.97
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Trends in Ecology & Evolution (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- UWA Profiles and Research Repository (UWA) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Nature and Landscape Conservation › Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Paleontology › Evolution and Paleontology Studies
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecological Modeling › Species Distribution and Climate Change
- Keywords
- species richness estimation, convergence of estimates, adaptive learning
- MeSH terms
- Bayes Theorem, Models, Biological, Uncertainty, Biodiversity
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
