A conservative estimate of the number of living species on Earth is 10 million, while 100 million is the most extreme. A mere 1.5 million has been studied and named by science.
Tropical rain forests, which comprise 6 percent of the Earth's land area, are host to more than 50 percent of its plant and animal species. Alas, at the rate tropical rain forests are being denuded, they may not exist by the year 2032 except for a few isolated reserves.
If living species are organized in terms of a pyramid, then microorganisms, whose number and variety are greater than any other living specie, occupy the base of the pyramid followed by plants, then plant eaters, and finally by meat eaters. What's alarming is the disproportionate ratio between the type and number of the living species that have yet to be discovered and the type and number of scientists who are trained to seek them out for scientific inquiry.
For argument's sake, let's say that for every ten herpetologists there is one entomologist. Does that make sense when for every reptile specie new to science there are 100 species of insects that are, likewise, new to science? No, of course not, but such is the state of the current scientific community.
