The DOI matches its Crossref record; 2 of the 2 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
How many species of flowering plants are there?
Open accessAbstract
We estimate the probable number of flowering plants. First, we apply a model that explicitly incorporates taxonomic effort over time to estimate the number of as-yet-unknown species. Second, we ask taxonomic experts their opinions on how many species are likely to be missing, on a family-by-family basis. The results are broadly comparable. We show that the current number of species should grow by between 10 and 20 per cent. There are, however, interesting discrepancies between expert and model estimates for some families, suggesting that our model does not always completely capture patterns of taxonomic activity. The as-yet-unknown species are probably similar to those taxonomists have described recently—overwhelmingly rare and local, and disproportionately in biodiversity hotspots, where there are high levels of habitat destruction.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities
Myers, N., Mittermeier, R. A., Mittermeier, C. G., da Fonseca, G. A. B., & Kent, J. (2000) · Nature · doi:10.1038/35002501 · Cited by 31,710
How many named species are valid?
Alroy, J. (2002) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.062691099 · Cited by 155
Cited by
Has the Earth’s sixth mass extinction already arrived?
Barnosky, A. D., Matzke, N., Tomiya, S., Wogan, G. O. U., Swartz, B., Quental, T. B., Marshall, C., McGuire, J. L., Lindsey, E. L., Maguire, K. C., et al. (2011) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature09678 · Cited by 4,400
The biodiversity of species and their rates of extinction, distribution, and protection
Pimm, S. L., Jenkins, C. N., Abell, R., Brooks, T. M., Gittleman, J. L., Joppa, L. N., Raven, P. H., Roberts, C. M., & Sexton, J. O. (2014) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1246752 · Cited by 3,542
Self-citationHow Many Species Are There on Earth and in the Ocean?
Mora, C., Tittensor, D. P., Adl, S., Simpson, A. G. B., & Worm, B. (2011) · PLoS Biology · doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001127 · Cited by 3,045
The number of known plants species in the world and its annual increase
CHRISTENHUSZ, M. J. M., & BYNG, J. W. (2016) · Phytotaxa · doi:10.11646/phytotaxa.261.3.1 · Cited by 2,113
How Many Species of Insects and Other Terrestrial Arthropods Are There on Earth?
Stork, N. E. (2018) · Annual Review of Entomology · doi:10.1146/annurev-ento-020117-043348 · Cited by 1,537
Metadata
- Authors
- Joppa, L. N., Roberts, D. L., & Pimm, S. L.
- Venue
- Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
- Publisher
- The Royal Society
- Published
- 2010-07-07
- Volume
- 278
- Issue
- 1705
- Pages
- 554-559
- ISSN
- 0080-4649 (ISSN-L)
- 0962-8452
- 1471-2954
- OpenAlex
- W2168644216
- Cited by
- 269
- References
- 2
- FWCI
- 17.34
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
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
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: How many species of flowering plants are there? https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1098/rspb.2010.1004
- The paper
- Joppa, L. N., Roberts, D. L., & Pimm, S. L. (2011). How many species of flowering plants are there? Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2010.1004
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.