Why is It So Difficult for Scientists to Know How

Question

Why is it so difficult for scientists to know how many species have already been described?
A) Scientific journals do not publish accounts of new species.
B) There isn't one location for cataloguing all species.
C) Scientists are too busy testing hypotheses to investigate the number of species on Earth.
D) Many species are microscopic, so they are difficult to study.

Accepted Answer

There isn't one location for cataloguing all species. Researchers are spread out around the world, working independently or in small groups, and there's no central database of all the species descriptions that have been published. As a result, different estimates of the total number of species exist.