We do not expect a significant increase in the rate of description of new species, but the description of new macroalgal species continues [e.g., [415],[416]].
We also identified information gaps by taxonomic group and assessed species discoveries over time for several taxa to visualize the rates of diversity description.
Though not surprising, the lower rates of adequate description of non-drug alternatives is unfortunate given the rapid growth of the pharmaceuticals budget, and the potential for non-drug therapies for alternative treatments.
It makes no sense to slow the rate of botanical description by forcing scientists to learn how to encode their discoveries in Latin or by putting up with the lag time in getting a discovery into actual print.
The rates of marine species description, driven by the increasing ability to explore previously unknown geographic areas, have never been higher, as well as the challenge to estimate the diversity of cryptic species through molecular studies (Appeltans et al. 2012).
Following the World Wars, the rate of taxonomic descriptions per year does not reach the pre-World War I peak of 30,790 descriptions until 1994 (28,724 descriptions).
Rate control at the macroblock level ensures that the total bit rate of all descriptions does not exceed the target rate.
However, it is important to note that claims of the World Wars directly affecting the rate of taxonomic descriptions would require deeper discussions and historical inquiry of biological/taxonomic activity that is outside the scope of the present discussion.
This increase in the rate of chondrichthyan descriptions in recent years is primarily associated with the lead up to the publication of a revised treatment of the entire chondrichthyan fauna of Australia (Last and Stevens, 2009), requiring formal descriptions of previously undescribed taxa.
The design of the study, together with response rates and description of the study population is presented in this report.
