Discovery pattern and species number of scale insects (Hemiptera: Coccoidea)

PeerJ. 2016 Sep 29:4:e2526. doi: 10.7717/peerj.2526. eCollection 2016.

Abstract

Few investigations have been made of the species description trend of scale insects. The present study reports the discovery pattern and taxonomic efforts for this group based on global species and a literature dataset. In addition, three asymptotic models (Logistic, Gompertz, and Extreme Value) based on a discovery curve were used to predict the species number of scale insects. Our results showed that the species description rate has been changing over time, with certain peaks and valleys in the past 250 years. The mean number of species described per year was 30, with the highest number of 195 described species in 1985. The increasing number of authors and the almost constant proportion of species described by 10% most prolific authors since the 1900s suggested that taxonomic effort has been increasing over time. The Gompertz model with lowest AIC value suggested that there are about 10,450 species of scale insects on Earth, nearly 30% of which remain to be described. Our study offers insights into the discovery pattern of scale insect diversity.

Keywords: Gompertz model; Scale insect; Species diversity; Taxonomic effort.

Grants and funding

The work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number: 31272348) and Fujian Provincial Department of Science & Techonoly (Grant Number: 2015J06005). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.