“Today, autonomous robots collect DNA while state-of-the-art sequencers process genetic samples quickly and cheaply, and machine-learning algorithms detect life by sound or shape. These technologies are revolutionizing humanity’s ability to catalog Earth’s species, which are estimated to number 8 million—though perhaps far, far more—by illuminating the teeming life that so often eludes human observation. Only about 2.3 million species have been formally described. The rest are nameless and unstudied—part of what biologists call dark taxa.”
From The Atlantic.