XVI International Botanical Congess

I will survey our current state of knowledge about the number of different eukaryotic species that have been named and recorded, about the likely true total number of species alive today, and about their present and likely future rates of extinction (as compared with average rates over the sweep of the fossil record). The talk will highlight the complications associated with synonyms (ultimately caused by lack of synoptic databases) and will offer opinions about current efforts to speed up the international process of coordinating what we do know and working faster on what we do not know.