On estimating the number of species from the discovery record
On estimating the number of species from the discovery record
Date
2005-02-04
Authors
Solow, Andrew R.
Smith, Woollcott K.
Smith, Woollcott K.
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DOI
10.1098/rspb.2004.2955
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Keywords
Large marine animals
Maximum likelihood estimation
Non-stationary poisson process
Taxonomy
Maximum likelihood estimation
Non-stationary poisson process
Taxonomy
Abstract
A common approach to estimating the number of species in a taxonomic or other group is to extrapolate the temporal pattern of historical species discoveries or descriptions. A formal statistical approach to this problem is described. This approach involves fitting an explicit model of the discovery record by maximum like lihood and using the fitted model to estimate the number of undiscovered species. The approach is applied to a description record of large marine animals covering the period 1828-1996. The estimated number of undiscovered species in this group is around 10 with an upper 0.95 confidence bound of around 16.
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Author Posting. © Royal Society, 2005. This article is posted here by permission of Royal Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 272 (2005): 285-287, doi:10.1098/rspb.2004.2955.
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Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 272 (2005): 285-287