Biodiversity of living benthic foraminifera: how many species are there?

Murray, J.W. (2007) Biodiversity of living benthic foraminifera: how many species are there? Marine Micropaleontology, 64 (3-4), 163-176. (doi:10.1016/j.marmicro.2007.04.002).

Record type: Article

Abstract

In ecological studies involving the analysis of 2.4 million living (stained) individual tests, to date 2140 species of benthic foraminifera have been recorded. Of these 602 species are agglutinated, 341 porcelaneous and 1197 hyaline. The numbers of species in the major environments are: marginal marine 701 (in 1.5 million individuals), shelf 989 (in 0.6 million individuals) and deep sea 831 (in 0.3 million individuals). 381 species occur in more than one major environment. Overall 33% have abundance of > 10% while 67% are of minor abundance (< 10%). The majority of species are rare, most are endemic and very few are cosmopolitan (5% or less). To estimate the potential total number of living species the following factors need to be quantified: the proportion of species already named (here considered unlikely to be less than 50% of the potential total), the number of species currently known to be dead but for which living representatives may yet to be found (assumed to be 5% = 107 species), and the proportion of species that are synonyms (10–25% = 214 to 535 species). Assuming that 50% of species have already been named (2140 + 107 = 2247), the potential total ranges from 3959 to 4280 species for 10% synonymy to 3210 to 3531 species for 25% synonymy.

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