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3 - The State of the World’s Biodiversity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 August 2019

By
Stuart L. Pimm  and
Peter H. Raven
Edited by
Partha Dasgupta ,
Peter Raven  and
Anna McIvor
Partha Dasgupta
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Peter Raven
Affiliation:
Missouri Botanical Garden
Anna McIvor
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

In this chapter, we ask several simple questions. How many species are there, both named and unnamed? How fast are species now going extinct? How fast do species go extinct normally? And how fast do they diversify and thus might be able to recover from the current massive losses? Finally, where are extinctions concentrated, and how can we use this information to prevent extinctions?

This deceptively simple question has a rich – and even theological – pedigree. Westwood (1833) speculated ‘On the probable number of species of insects in the Creation’.

Type
Chapter
Information
Biological Extinction
New Perspectives
 , pp. 80 - 112
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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