Life Has a History

If we represent all the known groups of organisms by a picture of appropriate size, we get something like this:

Graphical depiction of relative numbers of organisms

Remember that this represents only the species we know! New species of insects, roundworms, and other small organisms are being found all the time. The picture of the butterfly and roundworm might have to be enlarged ten times to show our estimates of the true number of these species alive today.

 
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