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SOS Report - 2010

Since its first release in 2008, The State of Observed Species (SOS) Report has been issued annually in partnership with the International Plant Names Index (IPNI); Thomson Reuters (publisher of Zoological Record); and the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology.  For the 2010 SOS Report, we are pleased to be adding new data partnerships with AlgaeBase (algae), MycoBank (fungi) and the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS).

The SOS is a report card on the status of our knowledge of Earth's species and summarizes the number of species newly described in the most recent year for which complete data are available.  SOS 2010 (PDF format) was released on May 21, 2010 and provides summary data for 18,225 living species and 2,140 animal fossil species described as new in the calendar year 2008.

In addition to new data partnerships, the 2010 SOS Report includes new features such as:

  • Species At-a-Glance: a data table of earth's total living species for 2007 and 2008;
  • Species Bites: quick facts and data analysis summaries;
  • Ernst Haeckel Design Series: the first SOS Report in a series using Haeckel's Art Forms of Nature color plates; and the
  • Fossil and Extant (living) species data disaggregation.

Please note that the PDF is large and may take a few seconds to download.