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The Plan to Identify Every Single Species in Norway Just Might Work

In four years, the country has identified more than 1,100 new species
Norwegian scientists rediscovered Andrews' rhizomnium moss, a species that hadn't been seen since 1888. Photo: Kristian Hassel NTNU University Museum

Since 2009, when Norway launched the project to catalog every native species living in its borders, scientists running the Norwegian Taxonomy Initiative have identified 1,165 new species, including new insects, spiders, fungi, crustaceans, and starfish and their work is far from done. Scientists estimate there are roughly 55,000 distinct species of life living in the country, so far about 41,000 have been discovered.

Of the newly-discovered species, about 60 percent are small terrestrial invertebrates, such as insects and spiders. Scientists have also discovered 227 new types of fungi, mainly through DNA analysis of formerly classified species.

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As part of the project, many of the new species have had their DNA sequenced, barcoded, and added to a national database called the Norwegian Barcode of Life network, which currently has the genomes of 3,800 species. The Norwegian government has spent roughly $4.6 million annually on the project, which is run by the country’s Biodiversity Information Centre.

Norway was one of the first countries to set a goal of identifying every species within its borders. Since Norway started its project, Sweden has followed suit. What’s happening in those countries is certainly scientifically progressive, but it also highlights the absurd diversity of life on Earth, and how hopeless identifying every species on Earth really is. There’s 55,000 distinct species (not including viruses and bacteria) in Norway, up near the Arctic Circle—as you get closer to the equator, that number multiplies exponentially. In one hectare of land in the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador, there are 100,000 species of insects.

So far, scientists have identified about 1.9 million species. Official estimates range from about 8.7 million species to 30 million species of insects alone. If that range seems a little wide, well, the truth is, we just have no idea. We’re still adding new species of tapir and jungle cat to the scientific literature—who knows what happens when you start looking closely at every bacterium, fungus, beetle and wasp.

That doesn’t mean that trying is a fool’s errand. Not every new fungus discovered is going to have much relevance on a grander scale. But with most known antibiotics already exhausted or losing effectiveness, new discoveries are always welcome. The Smithsonian Institute thinks so, at least, and recently started a project akin to the Norwegian Barcode of Life network, a plan to sequence the DNA of each and every one of Earth’s identified species. That project, called the Global Genome Initiative, is helping researchers determine how life evolved, and is helping to fill in missing branches along the evolutionary chain.

Norway has stated that its objective with the taxonomy initiative is to “increase the focus on biodiversity and raise public awareness about it,” which will allow the country to “make the issue of biodiversity an important factor in decision-making processes.”

Because we’re not sure what role these new species play in the ecosystem, and we’re not sure what role they could play in medicine, manufacturing, and environmental conservation. And there’s only one way to find out.