Others have already made some of the most important points, but I have a few comments. The higher taxa--kingdoms, domains, whaddya-call-ems--are in a great state of flux now, with a variety of personal views. The procaryote-eucaryote distinction seems clear (sorry, I spell these words with "c" because that's how they were originally spelled), although there are critters such as dinoflagellates that have real nuclei with odd bacterium-like chromosomes which seem to divide in bacterium-like ways. But if we agree to call these eucaryotes, they join a maze of other critters, uni- and multicellular, that can be divided into kingdoms usefully in various conflicting ways, with more information from DNA and RNA studies coming in all the time. You can get some good information, and see how I divided things as of 1999, by reading my textbook Biology (WCB/McGraw-Hill)--it was used at the U.Dub for a while, but I'm not sure where you can get it except maybe one of the on-line stores. Anyway, yes, insects seem to be the most diverse animals, and especially Coleoptera; I think it was Darwin's friend Huxley who was asked my some minister if his study of natural history had told him anything about the nature of the Creator, and he replied, "Yes, an inordinate fondness for beetles."
Regarding bacteriophages, the things I've used for most of my own research (though I haven't been in the lab for a long time), they are very abundant, and I believe someone has estimated that number of phage in the oceans would amount to about 10^33--that's 10 to the 33rd power. The most important thing you should know about phage is that they kill bacteria and are the greatest hope we have for fighting all kinds of bacterial infections in the future, as more and more bugs become resistant to antibiotics. My Evergreen colleagues, especially Betty Kutter, are working on these matters.

This ain't birdy talk!! Sorry. To make it more birdy I'll report that about a week ago one of our local Bald Eagles took a Coot out of the lake. Very exciting.

Cheers,
Burt

Burt Guttman
The Evergreen State College
Olympia, WA 98505 guttmanb at evergreen.edu <mailto:guttmanb at evergreen.edu>
Home: 7334 Holmes Island Road S. E., Olympia, 98503

________________________________

From: tweeters-bounces at mailman2.u.washington.edu on behalf of Kelly Cassidy
Sent: Mon 3/7/2011 7:15 PM
To: 'Gary Bletsch'; 'tweeters'
Subject: RE: [Tweeters] biodiversity question



Among the 3 multi-celled kingdoms (Plant, animal, and fungi), on land, insects surely lead in number of species in most places; probably all. In terms of biomass, plants lead. Lots of different insect species specializing in eating different plant products, plus all the different decay products, but ultimately, all energy comes from plants.

The eukaryotic protists are now divided into many kingdom, but I'm not sure their classification is close to settled. I can't keep up. The species concept gets a tad fuzzy at that level, anyway. In marine environments, I think diatoms have the greatest biomass, but for all I know, they have been split into multiple kingdoms.

Which reminds that I read something interesting on Wikipedia (that font of knowledge mixed with prankster garbage) the other day:


"Bacteriophages are a common and diverse group of viruses and are the most abundant form of biological entity in aquatic environments - there are up to ten times more of these viruses in the oceans than there are bacteria, reaching levels of 250,000,000 bacteriophages per millilitre of seawater."

Of course, that is in terms of numbers of virus particles, not biomass. Viruses are extremely small. Still, cool trivia.

The miniscule world beyond our vision rules the planet.

Kelly Cassidy

-----Original Me; sage-----
From: tweeters-bounces at mailman2.u.washington.edu [mailto:tweeters-bounces at mailman2.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Gary Bletsch
Sent: Monday, March 07, 2011 8:33 AM
To: tweeters tweeters
Subject: [Tweeters] biodiversity question

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
ficcava ?o s? come far suole
chi dietro a li uccellin sua vita perde, lo pi? che padre mi dicea: ?Figliuole,
vienne oramai, ch? 'l tempo che n'? imposto
pi? utilmente compartir si vuole?.



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