Every species is an insect (or nearly so): On insects, climate change, extinction, and the biological unknown

Abstract

Any estimate of the number of species on Earth at risk from climate change must begin with the question of how many species can be found on Earth, and because most species are insects, how many insect species in particular. The question of how many species of insects live on Earth and where they can be found is an old one. Linnaeus was aware of variation from place to place in the diversity of insects but believed that most insect species could be named in his lifetime. One of Linnaeus's students (he called them apostles), Daniel Rolander, traveled to Surinam, however, and encountered there a diversity of insect life that he found overwhelming. Rolander began to wonder in confronting such diversity whether the species he saw would ever all be collected (the task he had been given) and named (the task Linnaeus would take for himself when Rolander returned) (Dunn, 2009c). Rolander's experience was a hint of what was to come.