Scientists from Ohio State University said that most of these unknown creatures have a small
Small, barely noticeable differences in appearanceit's harder to tell when you're looking at a tiny 10g animal. You can't tell they're different species unless you do a genetic analysis.
Brian Carstens, professor of evolution, ecology, and biology of organisms at The Ohio State University
A team led by an Ohio State graduate studentDanielle Parsons used supercomputing and machine learning techniques to analyze millions of publicly available gene sequences from 4,310 mammalian species. The scientists also examined data on where the animals live, their habitat, life history and other relevant information.
As a result, they built a predictive model to identify mammalian taxa that are likely to contain cryptic species.
Based on our analysis, it is conservatively estimated that there are hundreds of species of mammals in the world that have yet to be identified.
Brian Carstens, professor of evolution, ecology and organismal biology at Ohio State University
The discovery in itself would not be a surprise to biologists, he said. Researchers estimate that only 1 to 10% of species on Earth have been formally described by researchers.
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