Ceballos and Ehrlich (2009) Discoveries of new mammal species .... PNAS 106:3841–3846

Hank's "Harper's Index" of Mammal Discoveries

• Number of categories of discovering new species: 3 (completely new finds (morphologically distinct), discovery that a well-known organism was actually > 1 species, and third, the elevation of subspecies to species. These last two are very similar, but the authors do not even address the > 600 cases of the third.)
• Number of new mammals found since 1993: 408
• Number of missing spellings of limestone forms: 1 (don't put the karst before the horse).
• Percentage of the land surface exploited, for crops, rangeland, building, and other: 70%
• Magnitude of the underestimate of unnoticed extinctions: gross (could we use range size to model this and actually quanitfy it?).
  
• Number of actual lemur species once thought to be only two species: 13
• Average range of previously known land mammals: 400,000 sq.km
• Average range of newly discovered land mammals: 84,000 sq.km
• Percentage of cells (cell=10,000sq.km) with rare species with low human population densities: 46%
• Percentage of cells (cell=10,000sq.km) with rare species with "relatively high" human population densities: >20%
• Number of commentators suggesting that the discovery of new species is a problem for conservation: 3
• Number of authors asserting that the discovery of new species is a not problem for conservation: 4