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Mass extinctions are characterized by the loss of at least 75% of species within a geologically short period of time (i.e., less than 2 million years). [18] [51] The Holocene extinction is also known as the "sixth extinction", as it is possibly the sixth mass extinction event, after the Ordovician–Silurian extinction events, the Late Devonian extinction, the Permian–Triassic extinction ...
While human activities are causing a loss of much of the world's biodiversity, amphibians appear to be suffering much greater effects than other classes of organism. Because amphibians generally have a two-staged life cycle consisting of both aquatic ( larvae ) and terrestrial ( adult ) phases, they are sensitive to both terrestrial and aquatic ...
Insects make up the vast majority of animal species. [14]Chapman, 2005 and 2009 [9] has attempted to compile perhaps the most comprehensive recent statistics on numbers of extant species, drawing on a range of published and unpublished sources, and has come up with a figure of approximately 1.9 million estimated described taxa, as against possibly a total of between 11 and 12 million ...
The world’s frogs, salamanders, newts and other amphibians remain in serious trouble. A new global assessment has found that 41% of amphibian species that scientists have studied are threatened ...
Amphibians are in decline worldwide, with 2 out of every 5 species threatened by extinction, according to a paper published Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature.
There is some debate over the severity of declining trends in the global mammal and the broader vertebrate population: while the Living Planet Report of the World Wide Fund for Nature reported a 68% decline in the aggregate wild vertebrate populations since 1970, [39] [40] [4] a scientific reanalysis of its data in Nature found that 98.6% of ...
The term is derived from Ancient Greek ζῷον, zōion ('animal'), and λόγος, logos ('knowledge', 'study'). [2] Although humans have always been interested in the natural history of the animals they saw around them, and used this knowledge to domesticate certain species, the formal study of zoology can be said to have originated with ...
Forests harbour most of Earth's terrestrial biodiversity. The conservation of the world's biodiversity is thus utterly dependent on the way in which we interact with and use the world's forests. [78] A new method used in 2011, put the total number of species on Earth at 8.7 million, of which 2.1 million were estimated to live in the ocean. [79]