More taxonomists describing significantly fewer species per unit effort may indicate that most species have been discovered

Recent studies show that there are more taxonomists describing species in recent decades than before. However, whether the rate of increase in number of taxonomists is greater than the rate of new species description has been questioned. We found a statistically significant decline in the proportion of species being described per number of taxonomists (i.e. authors of recent species descriptions) during the past century for (a) families of insects that had been stated not to show this trend, and (b) a sample of over 0.5 million marine, terrestrial and freshwater species. We suggest that this decreased ‘catch’ of species per taxonomic effort, despite scientists’ greater ability to explore and sample habitats, means it is getting harder to discover new species, and supports recent studies suggesting that two-thirds of all species have been named.

已有研究表明，近几十年来从事物种描述工作的分类学家（taxonomist）数量较以往有所增加。但学界对于分类学家数量的增长速率是否高于新物种描述速率这一问题仍存有争议。我们的研究显示，在过去一个世纪里，针对（a）此前被认为未表现出该趋势的昆虫科类群，以及（b）涵盖超过50万种海洋、陆地和淡水物种的样本集，每单位分类学家（即近期新物种描述论文的作者）所对应的新物种描述占比均出现了统计学意义上的显著下降。尽管当前科学家探索和采样生境的能力已大幅提升，但每单位分类学研究投入对应的物种发现“捕获量”却有所下降，这意味着发现新物种的难度正不断加大，同时也佐证了近期相关研究得出的结论：全球已有三分之二的物种被正式命名。