Currently (as of 2011) catalogued and predicted total number of species on Earth and in the ocean

Range Table - link species
Organism Biosphere
Reference Mora C, Tittensor DP, Adl S, Simpson AG, Worm B. How many species are there on Earth and in the ocean? PLoS Biol. 2011 Aug9(8):e1001127. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001127 p.5 table 2PubMed ID21886479
Comments "[Researchers'] current estimate of ~8.7 million species narrows the range of 3 to 100 million species suggested by taxonomic experts [1] and it suggests that after 250 years of taxonomic classification only a small fraction of species on Earth (~14%) and in the ocean (~9%) have been indexed in a central database (Table 2)."
Entered by Uri M
ID 109317