{"id":1090,"date":"2025-09-02T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/?p=1090"},"modified":"2025-09-05T19:13:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T19:13:08","slug":"the-search-for-earths-most-mysterious-creatures-is-turning-up-extraordinary-results","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/02\/the-search-for-earths-most-mysterious-creatures-is-turning-up-extraordinary-results\/","title":{"rendered":"The search for Earth\u2019s most mysterious creatures is turning up extraordinary results"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It\u2019s easy to assume, as many people do, that our planet is well explored. In the last few centuries, humans have summited Earth\u2019s highest peaks, dived its deepest ocean trenches, and trekked to the North and South poles, documenting the diversity of life along the way \u2014 the many birds, butterflies, fish, and other creatures with which we share our big planet. <\/p>\n

Life on Earth is now largely known. <\/p>\n

Except it isn\u2019t. <\/p>\n

The more that scientists study the planet\u2019s biodiversity, the more they realize how little of it we know. They estimate that for every species we\u2019ve discovered, there are likely at least another nine or so that remain undiscovered or unidentified, meaning around 90 percent of life on Earth is unknown. <\/p>\n

This doesn\u2019t include the big stuff \u2014 the black bears and belugas and bald eagles, all of which have scientific names and descriptions published in academic journals. The unknown is made up of small organisms, such as insects, mites, and crustaceans. These species are the nuts and bolts of ecosystems: They produce soil, pollinate crops, and feed almost everything. And most of them have yet to be identified. <\/p>\n

In just one fly family known as Cecidomyiidae, for example, scientists estimate there could be as many as 1.8 million species globally<\/a>, and yet fewer than 7,000 have been described. This is especially remarkable given that the total number of described species across the entire animal kingdom is somewhere around 2 million.<\/p>\n

Biologists call animals like this dark taxa, a term that refers to groups of organisms in which the bulk of species are undescribed or undiscovered. Some taxonomists have also called them biology\u2019s dark matter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost people think that life on Earth is described, and we have a good idea of how ecosystems are functioning,\u201d said Emily Hartop, a fly researcher and taxonomist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, who studies dark taxa. \u201cThe reality is that for most species on Earth, we don\u2019t know what they are, we don\u2019t know where they are, we don\u2019t know what they\u2019re doing. They are unknown.\u201d <\/p>\n

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Species that were unknown to science before they were collected.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Scientists who study dark taxa argue that lifting the shadow on these organisms is essential to our own survival. If we don\u2019t know what constitutes our ecosystems, we risk killing off the key players that make them function \u2014 or failing to detect a potential threat, such as a disease-carrying insect that could set off the next global pandemic. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe little things run the planet,\u201d said Rudolf Meier, a researcher at Berlin\u2019s Museum of Natural History<\/a> and Humboldt University of Berlin who also studies dark taxa.<\/p>\n

Hartop and some other researchers have dedicated their careers to exposing dark taxa \u2014 to making Earth\u2019s unknown known. But filling these gaps is an enormous task and, until recently, considered nearly impossible. The challenge comes down to process: How do you identify millions upon millions of species that are tiny, often look the same, and lack the traditional sort of charisma that funds expeditions?<\/p>\n

Dark taxa biologists find hundreds of new species wherever they look<\/strong><\/h2>\n

A little over a decade ago, when Hartop was living in Los Angeles, she and her colleagues set up bug traps in backyards across the city. They were mesh tents with openings, known as Malaise traps. Once flies buzz into them, they get stuck and navigate \u2014 rather unfortunately for them \u2014 into a vial of ethanol. The ethanol both kills and preserves the animals.<\/p>\n

\"New<\/p>\n

Over the course of just one year, the traps collected 99 species of scuttle flies, small insects in the family Phoridae that look, to my untrained eyes, a lot like fruit flies. Forty-three of those species were new to science<\/a> and had never been described before. <\/p>\n

When scientists look for dark taxa, they seem to find new species everywhere. Meier and his colleagues recently collected fungus gnats in Singapore, and their traps revealed 120 species<\/a>. All but four or five were unknown to science. When researchers went looking for wasps in Costa Rica that parasitize other insects, they found 416 species. More than 400<\/a> of them hadn\u2019t been described yet. <\/p>\n

And the opportunity for discovery extends beyond the animal world. Scientists recently analyzed<\/a> genetic codes from thousands of specimens of ectomycorrhizal fungi \u2014 a type of fungi that form symbiotic relationships with plant roots \u2014 and found that only around 20 percent of those codes matched known species. <\/p>\n

Why have these organisms been overlooked for so long? One reason is that they\u2019re typically small, often measuring less than 5 millimeters, Meier said. That makes them harder to notice \u2014 and less exciting by traditional standards.<\/p>\n

\u201cFunders are much more likely to give you money for birds and butterflies, because that\u2019s something that a funder, who is not a biologist, finds much more relatable,\u201d Meier told me. \u201cIf I want to get money for doing things on dark taxa, I first have to override these biases.\u201d<\/p>\n

But a far bigger obstacle is that these groups of life are extremely diverse. There are three species of elephants and eight species of bear. Meanwhile, there could be 1 million species of scuttle flies globally, Hartop said. <\/p>\n

That creates a problem of scale. While trapping bugs in tents is easy, it\u2019s much harder to identify them and demonstrate that they\u2019re different from other species that have already been described. Until recently, it was nearly impossible.<\/p>\n

We are in the Golden Age of discovery<\/strong><\/h2>\n

For hundreds of years, scientists have largely categorized animals by their appearance. A toucan is obviously different from a robin, which is obviously different from a hummingbird. Scientists use these distinctions in form to separate animals by species, typically defined as organisms that reproduce with each other but not with other animal groups.<\/p>\n

The study of form, known as morphology, has been used to categorize small things, too, such as moths and butterflies. But for some animal groups \u2014 scuttle flies, mites, and nematodes, for example \u2014 this approach is inadequate. While distinguishing these animals by appearance is often possible, it typically requires an enormous amount of time and expertise; scientists literally have to look at them one by one through a microscope. Plus, looks can be deceiving: A bunch of, say, black-and-blue butterflies<\/a> might appear identical but come from different genetic lineages that make them distinct species. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why a technology called DNA sequencing has been such a game-changer. In the 1970s, scientists figured out how to sequence part of an organism\u2019s DNA, producing a string of letters that corresponds to its genes. They later discovered that they could use just a small snippet of that sequence to tell one species apart from another. In 2003, a Canadian biologist named Paul Hebert dubbed<\/a> those snippets \u201cbarcodes\u201d because they serve as unique species IDs, akin to barcodes on cereal boxes in the grocery store. <\/p>\n

Over time, scientists sequenced animals and uploaded their barcodes to databases, helping organize and reorganize the animal kingdom. All the while, the technology evolved. DNA sequencing is now so advanced that taxonomists \u2014 those who classify life \u2014 can barcode thousands of specimens at one time. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s this approach that\u2019s helping illuminate dark taxa: Researchers can collect scores of specimens from the field, sequence portions of their DNA, and then upload those bits of code to an existing database to see if they match known species. If not, they might represent something new.<\/p>\n

Even with modern DNA sequencing, identifying unknown life is, to be clear, still very hard. A big issue is that there aren\u2019t barcodes for most species that scientists have already described. Museums might have physical specimens \u2014 dead moths or beetles in a drawer in their basement \u2014 that lack genetic data in online databases. So just sequencing a discovery is usually not enough to prove that something is new to science.<\/p>\n

When scientists are <\/em>confident that they\u2019ve found something new, they\u2019ll face additional challenges if they want to formally describe the animal and give it a scientific name. That typically requires multiple lines of evidence and a description published in a scientific journal. Doing that for dark taxa \u2014 which, again, have hundreds of thousands of unknown species \u2014 would be incredibly time-consuming. (The world of taxonomy is full of drama<\/a> about the species-naming process and how much evidence scientists should be required to provide. There\u2019s also a debate about whether formally naming species actually matters if they already have unique DNA sequences that identify them.)<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, modern DNA sequencing has massively sped up the process for discovering and identifying life. It\u2019s pretty extraordinary: Even though we\u2019ve known about the most visible species around us for hundreds of years, only now are we in the Golden Age of species discovery.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s unbelievable,\u201d said Hebert, a professor at the University of Guelph in Ontario who oversees the Center for Biodiversity Genomics, a DNA-barcoding research center. \u201cThis is the age of bio-discovery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Can we describe all life on Earth?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

That\u2019s the goal. While there are no reliable estimates for the total number of species on Earth, it\u2019s likely in the tens of millions. And again, only around 2 million are formally described, Hebert said. <\/p>\n

Before modern sequencing became a reality, identifying all life on Earth would have taken hundreds, if not thousands, of years and likely would have cost trillions of dollars. Now, some scientists are confident that they can do it in a matter of decades or even years. <\/p>\n

In 2005, Hebert launched a project with his colleague Sujeevan Ratnasingham that is essentially trying to collect DNA data for every animal on Earth. So far, the project \u2014 known as Barcode of Life \u2014 has sequences for roughly 1.5 million species, Hebert said, though many of those are not formally described. To barcode the rest would require no more than $1 billion, he told me confidently. That money would help fund expeditions and DNA sequencing around the world. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe want barcode records for every species,\u201d Hebert said. \u201cIf I can persuade the world to support this with about $1 billion, which is trivial, we can complete the inventory of animal life by 2040 \u2014 I am certain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hebert and other taxonomists imagine a world in which all species are known and can thus be tracked. Just as we monitor the weather for looming disasters, complete inventories of animal life could allow scientists to monitor biodiversity \u2014 both the obvious and obscure stuff \u2014 to see how our ecosystems are changing and what that means for us. Are ocean food chains we rely on shrinking? Are the insect larvae that make our soils fertile in decline? Is a pathogen on the loose?<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s also a more noble reason to discover life, he says. \u201cThis is the planet we live on,\u201d Hebert said. \u201cWe really should understand the organisms that we share it with.\u201d<\/p>\n

And if you\u2019ve got a billion dollars lying around, you can apparently help. <\/p>\n

\u201cFor a billionaire, it\u2019s a no-brainer,\u201d Hebert said. \u201cThat\u2019s a legacy for that person. You only get to do it once: discover life on our planet.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s easy to assume, as many people do, that our planet is well explored. In the last few centuries, humans have summited Earth\u2019s highest peaks, dived its deepest ocean trenches, and trekked to the North and South poles, documenting the diversity of life along the way \u2014 the many birds, butterflies, fish, and other creatures…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1092,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1090"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1100,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090\/revisions\/1100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}