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Article: The number of the beasts. (counting species)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- January 30, 1988
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1988 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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CREATION'S 100m species of plants and animals are far from evenly spread. The tropics are home to a wild profusion of species, there are a good few in temperate regions, and hardly any at the poles. How did this come about? New research has not only come up with an answer, it has come up with two; one for plants and, perhaps surprisingly, a different one for animals.
One way to find out about the population of a region is to count all the species. This is simple but time-consuming. So most studies content themselves with seeing how many different species there are in a particular family of plants or animals in a particular region. Generalising from one family of ...