Extinctions

[moobox]

Hello People

Just recently got into photography and in particular I am intrigued with the macro close-up thing. And I was looking on another forum and see some guy posting pics of insects and reptiles and mentioning things like ID is suggested or proposed by so-and-so. Does that mean it is a hitherto undiscovered species? And so I thought a little further into this and I wondered. I wondered how many species and sub-species we have actually rendered extinct before we actually even knew about them. And I am sure this has happened and is still happening because our progress and creativity at becoming supreme is relentless ne? And it is all so pretty tragic. Ag and maybe I just worry about the wrong sort of things nowadays.

[hilda]

Does that mean it is a hitherto undiscovered species?

Not necessarily Moobox. It could just mean that the person who requested an ID has not seen that specific insect or reptile before, and would like to know what it is.

[naturelover]

Sadly this is indeed the case, species are going extinct before they are even discovered particularly plants. This is particularly so in areas where there is a high level of endemism for example the Richtersveld where you find some species which are confined to a single koppie, kloof, etc.

[Imax]

Moobox, I think its a bit of all the things mentioned here.

With insects in particular I am sure there are still plenty that are undiscovered, especially if you look at the small ranges of some, and as such I am sure there are ones where we have destroyed these home ranges long before someone even took notice of this. If one just think of the past 100 years of development, especially before we even came up with the concept of doing an environmental analysis.

But the identificaiton of what we do find is also very difficult with many insect families only identifiable by desecting things like genitals (Butterflies, damselflies, Wasps) or mouth parts (flies), thus one can only venture a guess at the genus or family from a photo