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World Flora and Fauna
The diversity of life on Earth — plants, fungi, and animals across every continent and ocean.
World flora and fauna refer to the combined community of plants, fungi, and animals that inhabit the Earth. More than two million species have been formally described by science, and credible statistical estimates place the true global total at roughly eight point seven million eukaryotic species, with most remaining undescribed. This vast biological inheritance is unevenly distributed across continents, oceans, and island systems, and it provides the ecological services on which human civilization depends.
Overview
The terms flora and fauna originate in the classical personifications of plants and animals, Flora being the Roman goddess of flowers and Fauna a rustic deity associated with fields and forests. In modern biology, flora refers to all the plant species of a given region or time, and fauna refers to all the animal species. Taken together, world flora and fauna describe the living layer of the planet, its biosphere, from polar ice caps through temperate forests and grasslands to the coral reefs and open ocean. Fungi, a separate biological kingdom, are often treated culturally alongside flora because of their traditional grouping with plants in older textbooks, although genetically they are more closely related to animals than to plants.
Life on Earth is classified into a hierarchy of taxonomic ranks descending from domains and kingdoms through phyla, classes, orders, families, genera, and species. The three domains recognized in modern systematics are Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya. Within Eukarya lie the familiar kingdoms Plantae, Animalia, Fungi, and several kingdoms of protists that include algae, amoebae, and other single-celled organisms. Of these, plants and animals together form the most visible components of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, and they dominate the public imagination of biodiversity, yet microorganisms account for the largest share of both described and undescribed genetic diversity.
Global biodiversity is not evenly distributed. Tropical latitudes harbor disproportionate numbers of species, a pattern known as the latitudinal diversity gradient. The wet tropics of the Amazon basin, the Congo basin, Borneo, New Guinea, and Madagascar host the richest terrestrial communities, while coral reefs in the Indo-Pacific triangle bounded by the Philippines, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea support the highest marine species counts. Islands, which often evolve species found nowhere else, and isolated mountain ranges both contribute concentrations of endemic species that elevate their conservation importance far above their share of the Earth's surface.
Human activity has accelerated the pace of biological change so sharply that many scientists describe the current period as a human-driven mass extinction episode. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services reported in 2019 that roughly one million plant and animal species are threatened with extinction, many within decades. This article surveys the main groups of plants and animals, the biogeographic framework by which they are organized, the hotspots and megadiverse countries that carry the largest share of biological wealth, and the institutional tools used to describe, monitor, and conserve them.
Key Facts
- Species described
- Approximately 2.1 million eukaryotic species cataloged (Catalogue of Life, 2024 checklist)
- Species estimated total
- Approximately 8.7 million eukaryotic species (Mora et al., 2011, PLOS Biology)
- Plants (Plantae)
- Approximately 400,000 known vascular and non-vascular species, of which about 370,000 are angiosperms (flowering plants)
- Mammals
- Approximately 6,500 species (Mammal Diversity Database)
- Birds
- Approximately 11,000 species (International Ornithologists' Union)
- Reptiles
- Approximately 12,000 species (Reptile Database)
- Amphibians
- Approximately 8,700 species (AmphibiaWeb)
- Fish
- Approximately 37,000 species (FishBase and Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes)
- Arthropods
- More than 1 million described species and rising (over 80 percent of all described animal species)
- Fungi
- Approximately 155,000 described species; estimated 2.2 to 3.8 million exist (Kew State of the World's Fungi)
- Biogeographic realms
- Eight Udvardy realms, originally based on Alfred Russel Wallace's 1876 scheme
- Biodiversity hotspots
- 36 recognized by Conservation International; each holds 1,500+ endemic plants and has lost 70 percent or more of primary habitat
- IUCN Red List assessments
- More than 166,000 species assessed; over 47,000 listed as threatened with extinction (2024 update)
- Megadiverse countries
- 17 countries recognized by the Conservation Monitoring Centre as holding roughly 70 percent of the world's biodiversity
The Tree of Life Overview
The biological classification of living organisms originated with the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus, whose Systema Naturae, published progressively from 1735 onward, established the binomial naming convention and the nested hierarchy of kingdoms, classes, orders, genera, and species still used today. Linnaeus recognized two kingdoms of macroscopic life, Plantae and Animalia. Over the twentieth century, expanding microscopy and molecular tools forced a reorganization of life into additional kingdoms, including Fungi as an independent group in 1969 under the five-kingdom system of Robert Whittaker, and later a three-domain system proposed by Carl Woese in 1990 based on ribosomal RNA sequences.
Modern phylogenetics distinguishes three domains. Bacteria and Archaea are prokaryotes, single-celled organisms without a nucleus. Archaea, discovered in extreme environments but later found to be abundant in soils and oceans, form a separate evolutionary lineage from Bacteria despite superficial similarities. The third domain, Eukarya, encompasses all cellular life with a membrane-bound nucleus, including Plantae, Animalia, Fungi, and a diverse collection of protists that include green algae, brown algae, diatoms, ciliates, and slime molds. Chloroplasts and mitochondria within eukaryotic cells are understood to be the evolutionary descendants of ancient bacterial endosymbionts, as proposed by Lynn Margulis.
Within Eukarya, the kingdom Plantae includes land plants and, depending on the classification, several lineages of algae. Animalia comprises multicellular heterotrophs that ingest food, and Fungi are multicellular or single-celled heterotrophs that absorb nutrients externally. Large-scale tree-of-life projects, including the Darwin Tree of Life programme led by the Wellcome Sanger Institute, aim to sequence the genome of every eukaryotic species in Britain and Ireland as a model for a global effort. Parallel initiatives like the Earth BioGenome Project target sequencing of all 1.8 million known eukaryotic species within a decade. These genomic resources are reshaping the tree of life in real time, occasionally reordering groups whose relationships had been understood only from morphology.
Flora — the Plant Kingdom
The kingdom Plantae contains roughly 400,000 known species of land plants. Kew's Plants of the World Online, maintained by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, provides the most comprehensive published checklist. Plants are traditionally divided into four great groups, each representing an evolutionary stage in the colonization of terrestrial environments.
Bryophytes
Mosses, liverworts, and hornworts are small, non-vascular plants that lack true roots and depend on moist environments for reproduction. Bryophytes form ecologically important carpets in boreal forests and tundra, where Sphagnum mosses build vast peat bogs that lock away some of the largest carbon stores on the planet.
- • Approximately 20,000 described species
- • Non-vascular, moisture-dependent
- • Sphagnum dominates peat ecosystems
Pteridophytes
Ferns, horsetails, and lycophytes (club mosses) are vascular plants that reproduce by spores rather than seeds. Tree ferns were dominant forest canopy plants in the Carboniferous Period and remain ecologically important in tropical montane forests of New Zealand, the Neotropics, and Southeast Asia.
- • Approximately 12,000 described species
- • Vascular, spore-reproducing
- • Some tree ferns exceed 20 meters
Gymnosperms
Conifers, cycads, ginkgo, and gnetales produce seeds that are not enclosed in a fruit. Coniferous forests of pine, spruce, fir, and larch are the dominant vegetation of the boreal belt of Canada, Alaska, Scandinavia, and Siberia and contain some of the largest living organisms known, including the giant sequoia and coast redwood.
- • Approximately 1,100 described species
- • Naked seeds, mostly woody
- • Dominant in boreal biomes
Angiosperms
Flowering plants are by far the largest group of land plants, with about 370,000 described species divided into monocots, eudicots, and magnoliids. They dominate tropical and temperate lowlands and include almost all cultivated food crops. Dominant families by species count include Asteraceae (daisies), Orchidaceae (orchids), Fabaceae (legumes), Poaceae (grasses), and Rubiaceae (coffee family).
- • Approximately 370,000 described species
- • Flowers, fruits enclosing seeds
- • Most successful land-plant lineage
Economic botany, the study of plants used by humans, overlays this taxonomic structure with a cultural and nutritional dimension. Just three grass species — rice, wheat, and maize — supply more than half of human calorie intake, and a few hundred species provide almost all cultivated food, fiber, timber, and pharmaceuticals. Wild plants used in traditional medicine number in the tens of thousands, and modern pharmacology continues to derive new compounds from plant chemistry. Ethnobotanical research, together with gene banks that preserve wild relatives of crops, underpins agricultural adaptation to climate change.
Fungi
Fungi are a distinct kingdom of eukaryotic organisms that, although often grouped in everyday language with plants, are evolutionarily closer to animals. They include familiar mushrooms, molds, yeasts, lichens, and a vast microbial majority. Kew's State of the World's Fungi reports approximately 155,000 described species, while statistical estimates place the true total between 2.2 and 3.8 million, meaning only about five percent of fungal diversity has been formally named. The Global Biodiversity Information Facility and the Catalogue of Life track fungal occurrence records, and the United Kingdom-based MycoBank serves as the international nomenclatural registry for new fungal taxa.
Fungi play three broad ecological roles. As decomposers they recycle dead plant material and return nutrients to the soil, a function without which carbon would accumulate and terrestrial ecosystems would collapse. As mutualists they form mycorrhizal associations with more than 90 percent of land plants, exchanging soil nutrients for plant-manufactured sugars, and they team with photosynthetic algae or cyanobacteria to form lichens. As parasites they cause many plant diseases, including wheat rust, chestnut blight, and the amphibian disease chytridiomycosis that has driven dramatic global declines in frogs and salamanders.
Fungi matter to human economies. Yeasts ferment bread, beer, wine, and biofuels. The penicillin antibiotic derived from Penicillium revolutionized medicine, and subsequent fungal-derived drugs include cyclosporine and the statin cholesterol drugs. Edible mushrooms such as button, shiitake, and oyster are cultivated commercially, while truffles remain among the most expensive agricultural products in the world. Plant pathology mycologists track emerging fungal diseases that threaten bananas, coffee, and staple cereals, a task of mounting importance as climate change alters distributions.
Fauna — the Animal Kingdom
The kingdom Animalia contains all multicellular heterotrophic organisms that ingest their food. Animals first appear in the fossil record during the Ediacaran period, roughly 600 million years ago, and radiated into the major body plans recognized today during the Cambrian Explosion about 540 million years ago. The kingdom splits into invertebrates, which lack a backbone and account for roughly 95 percent of all animal species, and vertebrates, which include fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. For a broader survey focused on conservation priorities, see Animal Species and Biodiversity.
Within invertebrates, the single phylum Arthropoda, which includes insects, crustaceans, arachnids, and myriapods, accounts for more than 80 percent of all described animal species, dwarfing every other group. Mollusks are the second most speciose animal phylum, with snails, clams, octopus, and squid adding more than 85,000 known species. Other major invertebrate phyla include annelids (segmented worms), cnidarians (corals, jellyfish, sea anemones), echinoderms (starfish, sea urchins), sponges (Porifera), and nematodes (roundworms). Deep-sea sampling and environmental DNA work continue to reveal new invertebrate lineages at a rapid pace.
Agnatha (Jawless fish)
Lampreys and hagfish comprise roughly 120 living species. They are the most primitive living vertebrates, with cartilaginous skeletons and circular mouths lacking jaws.
Chondrichthyes (Cartilaginous fish)
Sharks, rays, and chimaeras number about 1,200 species. More than one third of assessed species are threatened with extinction, chiefly from overfishing and shark-fin harvesting.
Osteichthyes (Bony fish)
Roughly 36,000 species, the largest vertebrate class. Includes ray-finned fish (salmon, tuna, perch) and the lobe-finned fish (coelacanths and lungfish) that are the ancestors of all land vertebrates.
Amphibia
Frogs, salamanders, and caecilians total about 8,700 species. Amphibians are the most threatened vertebrate class, with roughly 41 percent assessed as threatened, largely due to chytrid fungal disease and habitat loss.
Reptilia
Lizards, snakes, turtles, crocodilians, and the tuatara of New Zealand amount to about 12,000 species. Lizards and snakes dominate the diversity, and new cryptic species are regularly described.
Aves
Birds are feathered, flying dinosaurs (theropod descendants), numbering about 11,000 species worldwide. They are the best-studied vertebrate class, with citizen-science platforms such as eBird producing hundreds of millions of annual records.
Mammalia
Roughly 6,500 species split into egg-laying monotremes (platypus, echidnas), pouched marsupials, and placental mammals (rodents, primates, whales, bats, carnivores, ungulates). Bats and rodents together make up more than half of mammal species.
Arthropoda (Invertebrate)
More than 1 million described species, with insects alone contributing about 1 million of these. Beetles (Coleoptera) form the single most species-rich order of all life, with roughly 400,000 described species.
Biogeographic Realms
The Earth's terrestrial surface is partitioned by biogeographers into large regions whose flora and fauna share a common evolutionary history, largely shaped by plate tectonics and climatic history. The Welsh naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace defined six zoogeographical regions in his 1876 work The Geographical Distribution of Animals. The modern eight-realm scheme refined by Miklos Udvardy in 1975 for the International Union for Conservation of Nature is the framework most widely used today.
Neotropical
Central and South America plus the Caribbean. The most biologically diverse terrestrial realm, with the Amazon basin at its heart.
- • New World monkeys, toucans, hummingbirds
- • Jaguars, sloths, capybara, anaconda
- • More than 40,000 plant species
Nearctic
North America from the Mexican plateau north through Canada and Greenland. Extensive boreal forests and temperate grasslands.
- • Bison, pronghorn, bald eagle
- • Coast redwood, giant sequoia
- • Shares lineages with Palearctic (Holarctic)
Palearctic
Europe, northern Africa, and most of Asia north of the Himalayas. The largest realm by area, with the Siberian taiga as its defining biome.
- • European bison, red deer, saiga antelope
- • Giant panda (on realm boundary)
- • Extensive steppe and tundra
Afrotropical
Sub-Saharan Africa, the southern Arabian Peninsula, and the western Indian Ocean islands. Home to the charismatic large-mammal fauna of the African savanna.
- • African elephant, lion, giraffe, zebra
- • Gorilla, chimpanzee, bonobo
- • Baobab, acacia, Welwitschia
Indomalayan
The Indian subcontinent and tropical Southeast Asia east to the Wallace Line. Dense evergreen rainforests in Borneo and Sumatra form major biodiversity centers.
- • Tiger, Asian elephant, orangutan
- • Rafflesia, Dipterocarpaceae
- • Coral Triangle marine hotspot
Australasian
Australia, New Guinea, and nearby islands east of the Wallace Line. Unique isolation produced the marsupial radiation and many endemic bird families.
- • Kangaroo, koala, wombat, platypus
- • Eucalyptus, proteaceae, tree ferns
- • Bird of paradise radiation
Oceanian
Micronesia, Polynesia, and Fiji. The smallest realm by land area, with high endemism on isolated islands but limited species totals.
- • Hawaiian honeycreeper radiation
- • Coconut palm, pandanus
- • Many land birds extinct post-contact
Antarctic
The Antarctic continent and sub-Antarctic islands such as South Georgia. The coldest and driest realm, with sparse terrestrial life but spectacular marine and bird colonies.
- • Emperor, king, Adélie penguins
- • Southern elephant seal
- • Antarctic krill underpins food web
The biogeographic boundary between the Indomalayan and Australasian realms is the Wallace Line, which Alfred Russel Wallace identified by observing that the fauna of Bali resembled Asia while the fauna of adjacent Lombok resembled Australia, despite only a narrow strait between them. The line reflects an ancient deep-water barrier that discouraged terrestrial dispersal. Huxley's Line, Lydekker's Line, and the transitional Wallacea region (Sulawesi, the Moluccas, the Lesser Sundas) further refine this transition. For an ecosystem-level perspective on these realms, see Biomes and Ecosystems.
Biodiversity Hotspots and Megadiverse Countries
The concept of a biodiversity hotspot was introduced by British ecologist Norman Myers in 1988 and later formalized by Conservation International. A hotspot must meet two strict criteria: it must contain at least 1,500 endemic vascular plant species (found nowhere else on Earth), and it must have lost at least 70 percent of its primary vegetation. By these thresholds, 36 hotspots are currently recognized, collectively covering only about 2.5 percent of the Earth's land surface but hosting more than half of the world's endemic plant species and a substantial fraction of its terrestrial vertebrates. Landmark hotspots include the Atlantic Forest of Brazil, the Madagascar and Indian Ocean Islands, Indo-Burma, New Caledonia, the Cape Floristic Region of South Africa, and Sundaland across Indonesia and Malaysia.
A parallel classification, introduced by the World Conservation Monitoring Centre in 1998 and maintained by Conservation International, identifies 17 megadiverse countries that collectively hold about 70 percent of global biodiversity. These are, in alphabetical order, Australia, Brazil, China, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, South Africa, the United States of America, and Venezuela. Brazil stands out as the single most biodiverse country on Earth by almost any metric, followed closely by Colombia, which holds the global lead in bird species count with more than 1,950 recorded.
Other exceptional regions include the Coral Triangle of the Western Pacific, an oceanic hotspot of marine biodiversity shared by Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, and the Solomon Islands, which supports more than 600 reef-building coral species and 2,000 reef-fish species. The Himalayan and Andes mountain systems host exceptional vertical biodiversity gradients, and Mediterranean-climate regions, including the California Floristic Province, the Cape, and parts of Chile, concentrate plant endemism. Biodiversity hotspot designation informs the priority-setting of many major conservation funders and the Convention on Biological Diversity.
Assessing Biodiversity
Biodiversity is measured and tracked by an interlocking network of scientific institutions and digital data infrastructure. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) maintains the Red List of Threatened Species, the global standard for extinction risk assessment. Each species is evaluated against quantitative criteria for population size, decline, and geographic range and placed in categories from Least Concern through Near Threatened, Vulnerable, Endangered, Critically Endangered, and Extinct. As of the 2024 update the Red List had assessed more than 166,000 species, of which over 47,000 are threatened with extinction, including roughly 41 percent of amphibians, 37 percent of sharks and rays, and 26 percent of mammals.
The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), headquartered in Copenhagen, aggregates occurrence records from natural history museums, citizen-science platforms, and research surveys. Its dataset exceeds 2.5 billion records and is freely accessible to anyone. The Catalogue of Life, governed jointly by Species 2000 and the Integrated Taxonomic Information System, provides a unified global checklist of currently accepted species names. iNaturalist, run by the California Academy of Sciences and National Geographic Society, has grown into the largest citizen-science biodiversity platform, with more than 200 million research-grade observations contributed by millions of users. Project-specific platforms include eBird (Cornell Lab of Ornithology) for birds and AmphibiaWeb (UC Berkeley) for amphibians.
At the institutional level, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the Natural History Museum in London, and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew preserve reference specimens that anchor species descriptions, and Kew's Plants of the World Online is the authoritative plant checklist. Modern methods include DNA barcoding, centralized in the Barcode of Life Data System (BOLD) at the University of Guelph, and environmental DNA (eDNA) sampling, which detects species from trace genetic material in water or soil. Together these tools are dramatically accelerating the pace of species discovery and the monitoring of species decline, complementing centuries of descriptive natural history.
Key Concepts and Ecosystem Services
Biologists distinguish several ways of measuring biodiversity. Species richness is the simple count of species in a given area. Endemism describes species restricted to a particular region, often used to identify areas of unique conservation value. Ecologist Robert Whittaker formalized three spatial scales of diversity: alpha diversity (local, within-community), beta diversity (turnover between communities), and gamma diversity (landscape-scale total). Functional diversity focuses on the range of ecological roles performed by the species in a community, while phylogenetic diversity measures the total evolutionary history represented. Each of these metrics captures a different aspect of the biological wealth of a place.
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, published by the United Nations in 2005, popularized the concept of ecosystem services, the direct and indirect benefits that human economies receive from functioning ecosystems. These include provisioning services such as food, timber, and freshwater; regulating services such as climate regulation, flood protection, and disease control; supporting services such as soil formation and nutrient cycling; and cultural services such as recreation and spiritual value. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) continues this analytical tradition.
Pollination by bees, flies, moths, butterflies, birds, and bats is a particularly visible ecosystem service. Approximately 75 percent of flowering plant species and roughly one third of global crop production by volume depend at least in part on animal pollination, according to IPBES. Global declines in bees and other insect pollinators, documented in synthesis reports over the past two decades, have raised urgent concerns about the long-term resilience of food systems and wild plant communities. Seed dispersal by vertebrates, nutrient cycling by invertebrate soil fauna, and pest control by predators and parasitoids are similarly foundational processes, all of which are affected by biodiversity loss.
National Flora and Fauna
Nearly every country designates national plants and animals as symbols of identity. These official emblems often appear on coats of arms, currency, and postage stamps, and they frame national conservation priorities. The examples below are representative rather than exhaustive. Links point to full country profiles.
Japan
National flower: cherry blossom (sakura); national bird: green pheasant.
Brazil
National tree: ipê-amarelo; national animal: jaguar (onça-pintada).
India
National bird: Indian peacock; national animal: Bengal tiger; national tree: banyan.
Canada
National animal: beaver; national tree: maple; national bird: gray jay.
South Africa
National animal: springbok; national flower: king protea; national bird: blue crane.
China
National symbol: giant panda; favored flower: plum blossom / peony.
Australia
National animal: red kangaroo; national flower: golden wattle; emblematic: koala, platypus.
Mexico
National bird: golden eagle; national flower: dahlia; emblematic: monarch butterfly.
Indonesia
National flowers: moon orchid, jasmine, Rafflesia; national animal: Komodo dragon.
Colombia
National tree: wax palm (Ceroxylon quindiuense); national bird: Andean condor.
Madagascar
Emblematic fauna: ring-tailed lemur, indri; emblematic flora: baobab, traveler's tree.
United States
National bird: bald eagle; national flower: rose; national mammal: American bison.
Invasive Species
Non-native species that establish self-sustaining populations and harm native ecosystems, economies, or public health are known as invasive species. They rank among the top direct drivers of global biodiversity loss alongside habitat loss, overexploitation, and climate change. The Invasive Species Specialist Group of the IUCN maintains the Global Invasive Species Database, which tracks thousands of established invasives worldwide. Island ecosystems, where endemic species evolved without mammalian predators or competitors, are particularly vulnerable, and island restoration programs that eradicate invasive rodents and cats have recovered many endangered seabirds, reptiles, and plants.
Well-documented examples include the zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha), which spread from the Caspian basin through the Great Lakes and Europe, clogging infrastructure and displacing native freshwater mollusks. The cane toad (Rhinella marina), introduced to Australia in 1935 to control sugar-cane pests, has expanded across northern Australia and poisons predators that attempt to eat it. The water hyacinth (Pontederia crassipes), native to the Amazon but introduced globally as an ornamental, chokes tropical lakes and rivers from Lake Victoria to Lake Tai. The brown tree snake (Boiga irregularis) arrived on Guam in cargo after World War II and extirpated most native forest birds by the 1980s.
Other high-impact invasives include the Indo-Pacific lionfish (Pterois volitans and P. miles) now dominant across the western Atlantic and Caribbean, the giant African land snail (Lissachatina fulica), cogon grass (Imperata cylindrica), and the European starling (Sturnus vulgaris), introduced to North America in the 1890s and now numbering in the hundreds of millions. Management combines biosecurity inspections at ports of entry, early detection and rapid response, physical and chemical control, and targeted biological control agents. The International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) and the World Organisation for Animal Health coordinate international efforts.
Conservation Tools and Gene Banks
Conservation combines two complementary strategies: in situ protection of species and habitats in the wild, and ex situ preservation of genetic material in controlled facilities. Protected area networks, managed by government agencies in nearly every country and coordinated by the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas, are the principal in-situ tool. The Convention on Biological Diversity, opened for signature at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, provides the global policy framework, and the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework set a target of protecting 30 percent of terrestrial and marine areas by 2030, widely known as the 30-by-30 goal.
Ex-situ facilities preserve the genetic diversity of species that cannot be adequately protected in the wild, or safeguard that diversity against catastrophic loss. Seed banks keep viable seeds in dry, frozen conditions for decades or centuries. The Millennium Seed Bank, operated by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew at Wakehurst, holds seeds from more than 40,000 plant species with a particular focus on wild species of drylands. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, opened in 2008 by the Norwegian government on Spitsbergen, is a deep-storage backup for national and international seed banks that collectively hold over a million crop-variety seed samples.
For animals, the Frozen Zoo at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance preserves cell lines, gametes, and embryos from more than 11,000 individuals across more than 1,300 species, including materials from the last living northern white rhino individuals. The United States Department of Agriculture National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation in Fort Collins, Colorado, is a parallel federal facility for livestock, crops, and microbes. Accredited zoos and aquariums participate in coordinated breeding programs under the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) Species Survival Plans and the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA) Ex situ Programmes. Botanical gardens similarly sustain living collections of threatened plants.
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), adopted in 1973 and administered by the United Nations Environment Programme, regulates trade in more than 38,000 species through a system of permits and appendices. Major global frameworks are complemented by national and subnational laws, and programs such as the Key Biodiversity Areas partnership help identify priority sites for site-level conservation. For a dedicated overview of protected areas and international agreements, see Global Conservation Efforts, and for a focused treatment of threatened species, see Endangered Species.
Sources
Detailed citations, data references, and institutional sources for all CountryReports content are listed on the Sources page. The following international organizations, scientific institutions, museums, and peer-reviewed journals are the primary authorities we rely on for world flora and fauna content. Each link points to the institution's homepage or relevant subsite.
Global Biodiversity Databases
- IUCN Red List of Threatened Species — The authoritative global inventory of species' conservation status, maintained by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
- Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) — An international open-access infrastructure aggregating more than 2.5 billion species-occurrence records worldwide.
- Catalogue of Life — A unified global checklist of more than 2.1 million species names, governed by Species 2000 and the Integrated Taxonomic Information System.
- iNaturalist — The flagship citizen-science biodiversity platform, a joint initiative of the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society.
- Plants of the World Online (Kew) — The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew's authoritative online checklist of the world's vascular plants.
- Barcode of Life Data System (BOLD) — The international DNA-barcoding reference library at the University of Guelph, Canada.
International Conservation Bodies
- Conservation International — Maintains the framework of 36 biodiversity hotspots and the 17 megadiverse-countries designation.
- Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) — The international treaty adopted at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and its successor frameworks, including the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
- Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) — The United Nations scientific body producing global assessments of biodiversity and ecosystem services.
- UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) — Analytical arm of UNEP on biodiversity policy, protected areas, and species data.
- CITES — The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, adopted in 1973.
Natural History Museums and Research Institutions
- Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History — Houses more than 146 million specimens and serves as a reference institution for North American and global taxonomy.
- Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew — The United Kingdom's lead institution for plant and fungal science, home to the Millennium Seed Bank at Wakehurst.
- Darwin Tree of Life — A Wellcome Sanger Institute-led programme to sequence the genomes of all eukaryotic species in Britain and Ireland as a contribution to the Earth BioGenome Project.
- Encyclopedia of Life — An open-access global aggregator of species pages, maintained with contributions from natural history museums and research institutions.
- Science — Peer-reviewed journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, publisher of many foundational biodiversity papers.
- Mora et al., 2011 (PLOS Biology) — “How Many Species Are There on Earth and in the Ocean?” — the statistical estimate of roughly 8.7 million eukaryotic species.
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