The reporter learned from the Chinese Academy of Sciences that the Biodiversity Committee of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in conjunction with the Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, recently jointly held a seminar on the cataloguing of Chinese biological species, and officially released the 2024 version of the Chinese Biological Species List.

The 2024 list includes 155364 species and subspecies units, including 141484 species and 13880 subspecies units. Compared with 2023, the 2024 list added 6423 species and 267 subspecies units, 4045 species and 159 subspecies units in the animal kingdom, 358 species and 16 subspecies units in the plant kingdom, and 2020 species and 92 subspecies units in the fungal kingdom. Among them, the animal kingdom Insecta Coleoptera (3275 new species) has become the group with the largest number of new species in this year's list, effectively filling the gap in the list of biological species in China.

On the same day, the Biological Species List of Miyun District 2024 was also released, which included 3785 species, including 1124 vascular plants, 480 terrestrial wildlife, 55 fish, 439 algae, 199 zooplankton, 1255 insects and 233 macrofungi.

The compilation and research of the 2024 edition of the list is led by the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and completed by taxonomic experts from multiple units, including the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Oceanography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

It is reported that China is the only country that publishes a list of biological species every year. Since 2008, the Biodiversity Committee of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has organized more than 300 experts to comprehensively and systematically collect and sort out the publicly published data of Chinese biological species. After each data is reviewed and confirmed by taxonomic experts, it is finally compiled into the List of Chinese Biological Species, which is published every year in the form of an annual list. The list of biological species in China has been widely used since its release. Since the new website was launched in 2018, the total download volume of the directory has exceeded 10TB, the number of online species page visits has exceeded 15 million, and it has been cited more than 1000 times by domestic and foreign journal papers and monographs. (Reporter Qi Fang)

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