My New Mind Map

1. Announced today by Census of Marine Life scientists and published by PLoS Biology, the figure of 8.7 million species is based on an innovative, validated analytical technique that dramatically narrows the range of previous estimates. Until now, the number of species on Earth was said to fall somewhere between 3 million and 100 million.

2. Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus created and published in 1758 the system still used to formally name and describe species. In the 253 years since, about 1.25 million species - roughly 1 million on land and 250,000 in the oceans - have been described and entered into central databases (roughly 700,000 more are thought to have been described but have yet to reach the central databases).

3. Within the 8.74 million total is an estimated 2.2 million (plus or minus 180,000) marine species of all kinds, about 250,000 (11%) of which have been described and catalogued. When it formally concluded in October 2010, the Census of Marine Life offered a conservative estimate of 1 million+ species in the seas.

4. Washington DC / Cambridge (UK), 23 August 2011 - Eight million seven hundred thousand (give or take 1.3 million) is the latest estimated total number of species on Earth and the most precise calculation ever offered, according to a new study co-authored by a researcher with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

5. Around 6.5 million species are found on land and 2.2 million (about 25 percent of the total) dwell in the ocean depths. The report, which was co-authored by Derek Tittensor at UNEP's World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), in Cambridge, UK, also shows that 86% of all species on land and 91% of those in the seas have yet to be discovered, described or catalogued.