The Next 50 Years: A Global Census of Life

January 10, 2020 • by Marc Airhart

Biologist David Hillis aims to discover the 80 percent of species on Earth that scientists know nothing about in the next few decades.

A montage of beetles, leaves, butterflies and DNA

We know absolutely nothing about roughly 80 percent of the different types of life on Earth. Biologist David Hillis aims to discover all those missing species—by some estimates 5 to 10 million—possibly in the next few decades. Sound impossible? He shares his vision for how this would work in this first episode of our new miniseries, The Next 50 Years.

Hillis, along with colleagues Derrick Zwickl and Robin Gutell, published a stunning new tree of life in 2003 based not just on the physical traits but also the genetics of 3,000 species from across all known groups of life. The unique circular layout which first appeared in the journal Science has come to be known as a Hillis plot.

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