Angiosperms (flowering plants) comprise approximately 300,000 described species.
With some 360 described species, bdelloids are the largest class of multicelled animal that reproduces asexually.
Metazoa are the multicellular eukaryotic group with the largest number of described species, over 1.6 million1.6
The parasitic lice (order Phthiraptera) have ~5,000 described species in four suborders.
Cluster analysis identified seven groups, corresponding to described species that capture the structure of the genus.
The genus includes three described species: Archaefructus eoflora, A. liaoningensis, and A. sinensis.
The vast majority of described species are living only 8.7% of those described formally are fossils.
Of particular interest are taxa with numerous poorly described species in institutional collections.
Only the orchid family (Orchidaceae) is larger, with about 25,000 described species.
Moreover, a greater fraction of recently described species are critically endangered (Table 1).
Molecular surveys have suggested the diversity is much greater than the current number of described species, and that many "species" described in multiple hosts are in fact different, but gene sequences from formally described species remain a rarity.
