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Scientists Say Earth May Have Millions More Insect Species Than Previously Thought

A new DNA-based study estimates Earth may have 14 million to 20 million insect species, meaning most could still be unidentified.

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We’ve always been pretty sure there are a lot of insects out there. Scientists have long estimated that roughly 10 quintillion individual insects are alive on Earth at any given moment. The assumption, though, was that the number of species making up that swarm was much smaller, around 6 million. Turns out, according to new research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, we may have been undercounting by several millions.

In the study, the researchers argue that the real number is somewhere between 14 million and 20 million… and........

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