 It was a beautiful Monday morning when a scientist or I should say a biologist was walking down the street just to reach his office or his lab and Suddenly he saw a spaceship in the sky and to his surprise it landed just in front of him He was so confused and scared But in no time a friendly alien got down from the spaceship He seemed very harmless and he had just one question for this human. He saw for the first time How many different lifeforms are there on this planet as I landed I could see some on the ground I could see some flying. I could see some walking. So how many different lifeforms are there on the earth and The biologist had no answer Well for a biologist it was kind of embarrassing, right? Because this is the most basic question anyone could ask about life But again, it's not that they are not trying Because considering the total land area and the total lifeforms that's present on our planet earth Counting all of them is not a child's play, right? Because just imagine life exists right from top of the mountain ranges to the bottom of the deepest of sea and Even in places where human survival is not possible So counting all of those is definitely a difficult task to do at least we can all agree on that, right? So this helpless embarrassed scientist Just for the sake of answering the alien thought of telling him about IUCN So the scientists told the alien that hey look we are human beings and we have brains and we are the most intelligent creatures on this planet earth and We have created something called IUCN International Union for a conservation of nature that releases a book called a red data book and in 2004 The book said that we have till now Successfully discovered and documented a little more than 1.5 million different species Okay with this answer from the scientist the alien flew back to his own planet All right now coming back to the data of IUCN from 2004 This is a data that talks about the known and discovered species now We have no clue how many there are in the wild that are yet to be discovered that call this earth their home so researchers all over the world started coming up with their own estimates and The wild part was the estimates would range somewhere from 20 million to 50 million So the estimates were all over the place Until Robert May came into the picture Robert May was a leading mathematical ecologist And was known for his extraordinarily quick and elitical brain And he based on the recorded data of species at that time made an estimate that there could be somewhere around seven million species on this planet and As his way of estimation seemed convincing to a lot of scientists most of them agreed with this seven million estimate But if Robert May was true with a seven million number Then looking at the IUCN data, which is just 1.5 million. We have not yet traveled half the road, right? But there are some good news with the increase of internet usage in the past 20 25 years Scientists are now able to communicate easily. They are able to share the refindings and research really quick and More and more number of species are being discovered each year Now just out of curiosity. I looked up for species that I discovered this year till August 2022 And I found out that the world's largest lily was discovered only this year and it was discovered in Bolivia Then a new species of millipede was discovered in USA and it was named after Taylor Swift It is named as Nineria Swifty and then a frog was discovered this year called the Tepeir frog in Peru But this frog is very famous in social media as the chocolate frog from Harry Potter Interesting, right? Now you can always Google about new discoveries and just to boost your curiosity There are some even discovered from India this year So go Google up and find out what are those All right Now this interesting new discoveries are not important for exams on The flip side what's important is sadly not very interesting Well, the examiner expect us to remember certain data is given by the IUCN Okay, so talking about data out of all the species recorded by IUCN 70% are Animals and even among animals if we talk about invertebrates only The most species rich taxonomic group is the class insecta and it's probably not surprising, right? If I may ask you when was your last encounter with an insect? You would say probably a few minutes ago with a mosquito or something or maybe you have left your food uncovered So there were a lot of flies on top of it So literally you don't even have to step out of your home to encounter an insect It is so much in abundance everywhere. So next after insects the highest percentage is occupied by the mollusks popular for their slimy soft bodies and Here is a snail as an example Now after the mollusks, we have the crustaceans for example the lobsters or the crabs and The rest part is occupied by the other classes of invertebrates all right now let's move on to vertebrates and You will see that 50% of the vertebrates are fishes Now again, it's not surprising right because water covers the maximum area on our planet and Land is just 29% so having a great diversity in the water world is not surprising Now after fishes we have birds. There is a pigeon for example and reptiles. So here is a turtle Now it is said that birds and reptiles got almost the same duration to evolve and Therefore it can be possible that they have almost similar number of varieties Moving ahead. We have mammals and amphibians now talking about amphibians they are found near freshwater and we know that most of the world water cover is marine and therefore there The amphibians location is restricted only to few places Places that have very high rainfall So that that can be a reason that lower variety of amphibians are discovered till now And then we have mammals that also share similar percentage with amphibians on the pie chart So this was all about the discovered animals now. Let's talk about the discovered plants So out of the total discovered species plant Constituted 22% and under the plants the maximum Percentage is off fungi now in the latest system of classification fungi is not included under the plant kingdom But again, if we look back if we consider the two system of classification Their fungi was included in plants, right? So that is why maybe the IUCN decided to keep fungi here Now after fungi the highest percentage is of angiosperms That is the flowering plants and after angiosperm. We have the algae's Right after algae's the highest percentage on the pie chart is occupied by mosses and fawns and its allies and Last a very small portion on the pie chart is occupied by lichen Okay, now you may think hey, where is gymnosperm? We have read about gymnosperm and plant kingdom, but we can't see it on the spy chart Well, the reason could be the very less identified species of gymnosperm It is so low that it could not even secure its position into the spy chart On the other hand the diversity of fungi is so huge that it alone is more than the total vertebrate species diversity And apart from gymnosperm, if you have observed we have also not spoken about bacteria Our prokaryotes in general and this is because the current system of classification is not suitable for it And now that we are talking about bacteria's and microorganisms. Let me tell you a fun fact Do you know that we have more microorganisms inside our body than than human cells? Yes, microorganisms outnumber human cells by 10 to 1 So there is a wide variety already within a single human body and now we are talking about the diversity in the entire world So it's almost like counting sand on a beach on a windy day and also this microorganisms are bacteria's they differ from another species In a very slight manner Distinguishing them is also a difficult task and most of them are also difficult to culture in a lab So considering all that prokaryotes are omitted from this listing or estimation Okay, and the rest 8% of the discovered species are the ones which are not mentioned in the spy chart All right, so this was about the species diversity that is found in the entire world Okay, now it's time. We focus our discussion to a small piece of land in this entire world, which is India Now why is India so important? Well, this is because India is one of the 17 mega biodiverse countries in the world Wonderful, but what are the conditions that makes a country biodiverse? Well, there are so many but there are two basic conditions first among them is that The country should have at least five thousand species of endemic plants endemic as in the plants that are found only there And nowhere else in the world and the next is the country should have a good marine cover around its borders So let me write that it should have marine life abundant marine life around it and India has those Now if we talk about the total land area India constitute just 2.4% of the total land area of this earth and Despite its small land area whooping 8.1% of total global Species diversity called India their home Wonderful, right? Now. Let's talk about the discovered and documented species of India So when it comes to plants we have around 45,000 species discovered and described from India and when it comes to animals Our country has documented around 90,000 different species How wonderful is that? But wait if we agree on what Robert May's estimate was then this numbers for a country like India is just the tip of an iceberg If if we consider his estimates India is yet to discover another one lakh plant species and And around the three lakh animal species more So we have a long way to go, right? But considering the limited number of scientists in our world has do you think we can ever reach there? Well, many species will go extinct even before we discover and document them. That's that, right? So can we do something about it? The answer is yes If you are curious enough and you want to contribute towards the discovery of new species now You can definitely do that in this age of internet, which is making the world a smaller place There are a lot of websites in which you can upload information Let me show you one among them, which is called the I nature list And this is how it works if you see something which is weird or new to you You can just click a picture and upload it to I nature list There are a lot of scientists or texonomist there They can look at your picture and the location in which this picture was taken and then you can you can discuss About that picture if it is an already discovered species, then they will inform you about that that way You will enhance your knowledge and if it is something which is not yet discovered Wow, you may end up discovering a new species or Maybe save an endangered species from extinction How great is that? So go share it with your friends or any younger sibling who would love to do this with you And I hope you start looking at nature with more curiosity now All the best