Red sleeve wax cicada.
white-naped crane.
White and yellow goose cream.
Gilbert's white spotted orchid.
■ Our reporter Feng Lifei
On May 22, on the occasion of the International Biodiversity Day, the Biodiversity Committee of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and its partners released the 2024 version of the Chinese Biological Species List (hereinafter referred to as the 2024 version of the list) at the Chinese Biological Species Cataloguing Seminar.
The reporter learned from the meeting that the 2024 list included 155364 species and subspecies units, including 141484 species and 13880 subspecies units, 6423 species and 267 subspecies units more than the 2023 list.
"When we first released the list of biological species in China in 2008, the total number of species was more than 45000, which has more than tripled this year." Mark Ping, deputy director and secretary-general of the Biodiversity Committee of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that the list answered the basic question of "what is biological diversity" from the national level.
Leading animal species
It is worth noting that Mark Ping said that after 17 years of iterative updating since the first list was released, the plant species that initially led the list have been replaced by animal species.
In the 2024 list, 73862 species and subspecies are included in the animal part. Among them, insects and invertebrates account for the largest proportion in the animal part, reaching 60769 species. 4045 species and 159 subspecies were newly added to the animal part, making it the group with the largest number of newly included species in the 2024 list, especially the Insecta Coleoptera. 3275 species were newly added, effectively filling the gap in the list of biological species in China.
In addition, 47474 species and subspecies were included in the plant part, and 27807 species and subspecies were included in the fungus part. In addition, the list also includes 2503 species and 63 subspecies units of Protozoa, 1968 species and 413 subspecies units of Pigment, 463 species and 6 subspecies units of Bacteria, 655 species of viruses and 150 subspecies units.
"China is the only country in the world that updates the list of biological species every year. The core basic data of biodiversity provided by the list has played an important role in supporting creative conservation, promoting international cooperation, and implementing international conventions," said Lin Congtian, an engineer from the Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a member of the editorial team of the list of biological species.
Taxonomy to be "rescued"
Since 2008, the Biodiversity Committee of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and its partners have organized more than 300 experts to comprehensively and systematically collect and sort out publicly published data on China's biological species, and released a 17 year list of biological species.
"In the past 17 years, the huge leap in the number of biological species in the list shows that our team is relatively successful in inheritance." Mark Ping said that at first, only three scientists, including Yao Yijian, a researcher of the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, were organizing the work related to the list of biological species; Now, the editing team of the directory has changed a group of young people, which not only continues this matter, but also works very well.
The compilation of the biological species list is still attracting more scientists. Last year, Lin Congtian received a "self recommendation" email from Dong Yajie, associate researcher of the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The letter said: "There are few terrestrial molluscs in the current biological species list. If this work has not been carried out, my team can sort out a list of about 200 kinds of snails."
Despite their achievements, many scientists who participated in the editing work at the meeting said that there was still much work to be done, for example, taxonomy was in urgent need of "rescue".
"The list of biological species seems relatively simple, but behind it is the efforts and support of taxonomists, otherwise it would be impossible to do this," Markpin said.
As a basic discipline supporting biodiversity research and conservation, the development of biosystematics in China is facing difficulties. As with endangered species, the number of taxonomists in China has declined sharply.
"Each species category in the Chinese Biological Species List needs to be reviewed by experts, but as taxonomists are decreasing, many species groups cannot find suitable experts," said Ji Lijiang, a researcher at the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
He said that China is the only country that integrates the information of all species distributed in the nodes every year according to the international "Species 2000" standard, but there are still many gaps in China's biological species list at present, because of the lack of taxonomists, we have to find another way to make up for and improve.
This year, in order to make up for this shortcoming, the directory editing team had to "export" the species list of Arthropoda distributed in China from the global biological species list to fill the gap.
China's biological species research "going global"
The symposium also announced the important biological species groups newly published by Chinese scientists in 2023. It includes 93 new vertebrate species, 989 new insect taxa, 14 new genera and 235 new species of plants.
In 2023, Li Shuqiang, a researcher at the Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, named 171 new taxa and continued to be the "person who discovered the most new spider species in the world". From 2016 to 2023, he named 1349 new taxa, accounting for 19% of the world's new spider taxa published in the same period.
Li Shuqiang introduced that in 2023, 344 scholars around the world published 1 new family, 70 new genera and 1240 new species of spiders, of which 94 Chinese scholars published 33 new genera and 507 new species, ranking first in the world. Among the top 30 scholars who will name the most new spider species in 2023, there are 13 Chinese scholars.
Remarkably, these new spider species published by Chinese scholars are not only from China, but also from 11 countries, such as Vietnam and Myanmar, which shows that Chinese scholars in the field of arachnoid research are going international.
"At present, China's biological species research is extending outward." Mark Ping said that since 2015, the "Asian Plant Digitization Plan" led by the Biodiversity Committee of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has established cooperation with experts from many countries and completed the first draft of the plant directory in 48 Asian countries/regions. At present, more institutions are participating in it.
"In the future, through the establishment of a digital platform for temperate Asian plants through multilateral cooperation, I believe that more people will realize the importance of this matter and actively participate in it, so that China's biological species research can 'go global'."
