Gary,

There are more animal than plant species in the world, and this is probably true for pretty much anywhere in the world. As you surmised, the diversity of insects greatly overshadows that of plants. If they were thinking of vertebrate animals only, it would be a different story.

We know so much less about microscopic organisms that it's hard to put them in the ranking. There are far fewer described species of bacteria and Archaea than described animals or plants, but who knows how many species there really are.

Here's a website with ## of species of plants and animals, not single-celled critters.

http://www.currentresults.com/Environment-Facts/Plants-Animals/number-species.php

There are other websites that give figures, and some of them are somewhat different from this one. I was amused by the figure of 9,998 bird species.

Dennis


On Mar 7, 2011, at 12:01 PM, tweeters-request at mailman2.u.washington.edu wrote:

> Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2011 08:33:24 -0800 (PST)
> From: Gary Bletsch <garybletsch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [Tweeters] biodiversity question
> To: tweeters tweeters <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
> Message-ID: <601509.20098.qm at web161215.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
>
> Dear Tweeters,
>
> On a recent birding trip, a debate arose about plants and animals. The question is, would there be a greater number of plants species, or a greater number of animal species, in a given habitat?
>
> The other fellow stoutly maintained that, in any given environment, there will be more species of plants than of animals. I would have thought that, at least on land, there would be more species of INSECTS than of plants and other animals combined, no?
>
> In saltwater environments, I would think the animal species would vastly outnumber the plants, but the protists would outnumber the other kingdoms.
>
> In freshwater, I am not so sure.
>
> I have no idea how the bacteria would fit into such a ranking.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Yours truly,
>
> Gary Bletsch? Near Lyman, Washington (Skagit County), USA? garybletsch at yahoo.com? Mentre che li occhi per la fronda verde

-----
Dennis Paulson
1724 NE 98 St.
Seattle, WA 98115
206-528-1382
dennispaulson at comcast.net



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