Hypothetical list of biota

Last updated April 08, 2019

A hypothetical list of biota , or "hypothetical list" for short, is a list of taxa (of plants, animals, fungi etc.) which are not recorded from a given geographical area, but which may be found there. Such lists are sometimes included by authors of regional biota, partly to demonstrate that the authors have considered and rejected the taxa in question rather than overlooked them, and partly to encourage researchers and others to seek out the taxa in question so that they can be added to the list of the area's biota in future revisions.

Plants are mainly multicellular, predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, plants were treated as one of two kingdoms including all living things that were not animals, and all algae and fungi were treated as plants. However, all current definitions of Plantae exclude the fungi and some algae, as well as the prokaryotes. By one definition, plants form the clade Viridiplantae, a group that includes the flowering plants, conifers and other gymnosperms, ferns and their allies, hornworts, liverworts, mosses and the green algae, but excludes the red and brown algae.

Animals are multicellular eukaryotic organisms that form the biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, are able to move, can reproduce sexually, and grow from a hollow sphere of cells, the blastula, during embryonic development. Over 1.5 million living animal species have been described—of which around 1 million are insects—but it has been estimated there are over 7 million animal species in total. Animals range in length from 8.5 millionths of a metre to 33.6 metres (110 ft) and have complex interactions with each other and their environments, forming intricate food webs. The category includes humans, but in colloquial use the term animal often refers only to non-human animals. The study of non-human animals is known as zoology.

Taxa may be included for different reasons:

They may be resident close to the region in question, and the region may have habitat which appears suitable
They may be long-distance vagrants with a pattern of occurrence
They may be poorly studied taxa, which the authors feel could be found in the region if appropriate search techniques are used
There may be historical evidence of occurrence which the authors felt was not watertight enough to justify inclusion in a definitive list for the region

A 1973 checklist of fleas in Connecticut added species to its hypothetical list if they were documented in a bordering state and have a host found in Connecticut.^[1]^:210

In biology and medicine, a host is an organism that harbours a parasitic, a mutualistic, or a commensalist guest (symbiont), the guest typically being provided with nourishment and shelter. Examples include animals playing host to parasitic worms, cells harbouring pathogenic (disease-causing) viruses, a bean plant hosting mutualistic (helpful) nitrogen-fixing bacteria. More specifically in botany, a host plant supplies food resources to micropredators, which have an evolutionarily stable relationship with their hosts similar to ectoparasitism. The host range is the collection of hosts that an organism can use as a partner.

Ornithological works which have included hypothetical lists include the following:

A field guide to the birds of Hawaii and the Tropical Pacific by Pratt, Bruner and Berrett
Birds of South Asia. The Ripley Guide by Rasmussen and Anderton

<i>A field guide to the birds of Hawaii and the Tropical Pacific</i>

A Field Guide to the Birds of Hawaii and the Tropical Pacific is a 1987 book by Harold Douglas Pratt, Jr., Phillip L. Bruner and Delwyn G. Berrett. It is published by Princeton University Press and is produced as both hardback (ISBN 978-0-691-08402-2) and softback (ISBN 978-0-691-02399-1) editions. The book is primarily a field guide to birds found in the Hawaiian islands, Micronesia, Fiji and tropical Polynesia, including some distribution and status data. It was the first identification work to cover the birds of the whole of this region.

<i>Birds of South Asia. The Ripley Guide</i> book

Birds of South Asia. The Ripley Guide by Pamela C. Rasmussen and John C. Anderton is a two-volume ornithological handbook, covering the birds of South Asia, published in 2005 by the Smithsonian Institution and Lynx Edicions. The geographical scope of the book covers India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, the Chagos archipelago and Afghanistan. In total, 1508 species are covered. Two notable aspects of Birds of South Asia are its distribution evidence-base — the book's authors based their distributional information almost completely on museum specimens — and its taxonomic approach, involving a large number of species-level splits.

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India has some of the world's most biodiverse regions. The political boundaries of India encompass a wide range of ecozones—desert, high mountains, highlands, tropical and temperate forests, swamplands, plains, grasslands, areas surrounding rivers, as well as island archipelago. It hosts 4 biodiversity hotspots:the Himalayas, the Western Ghats, the Indo-Burma region and the Sundaland. These hotspots have numerous endemic species.

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Taxonomic sequence is a sequence followed in listing of taxa which aids ease of use and roughly reflects the evolutionary relationships among the taxa. Taxonomic sequences can exist for taxa within any rank, that is, a list of families, genera, species can each have a sequence.

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References

↑ Miller, Donald H.; Benton, Allen H. (1973). "An Annotated List of the Siphonaptera of Connecticut". Journal of the New York Entomological Society. 81 (4): 210–213. JSTOR 25008885.

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[Miller_et_al.,_1973-1] Miller, Donald H.; Benton, Allen H. (1973). "An Annotated List of the Siphonaptera of Connecticut". Journal of the New York Entomological Society. 81 (4): 210–213. JSTOR 25008885.