Effort to catalog all species tops 1 million

WASHINGTON – A worldwide scientific effort to catalog every living species has topped the 1 million milestone.

Six years into the program the total has reached 1,009,000, researchers report. They hope to complete the listing by 2011, reaching an expected total of about 1.75 million species.

Thomas M. Orrell, a biologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, said the finished catalog will include all known living organisms, from plants and animals to fungi and microorganisms such as bacteria, protozoa and viruses.

“Many are surprised that, despite over two centuries of work by biologists and the current worldwide interest in biodiversity, there is presently no comprehensive catalog of all known species of organisms on Earth,” Orrell said.

The Integrated Taxonomic Information System-Species 2000 Catalog of Life provides access to data maintained by a variety of scientific organizations.

The project, involving some 3,000 biologists, is led by Frank Bisby of the University of Reading in England and Orrell.

Having internationally accepted standards for species’ names will help researchers compare the diversity of life in various regions and produce uniform catalogues of germs, packets of seeds or genetic resources, Bisby said.

The biggest section of the database currently is LepIndex, listing 253,680 species of lepidoptera, which are butterflies and moths. At the small end of the scale is a database that covers 86 species of krill, the tiny shrimplike creatures that whales eat.