Threatened arthropods United States, and IUCN Red List for international purposes. Only a tiny fraction of the planet's endangered arthropods are formally recognized as such, as no one has ever evaluated the conservation status of the vast majority of arthropod species. It is difficult to estimate the total number of endangered arthropod species, since many of the taxa themselves have not been recorded. For example, in North America the estimated number of insect species exceeds 163,000, of which only about two thirds are taxonomically known. An even greater discovery awaiting, over 72 percent of North American arachnids are yet to be named
Threatened arthropods conservation status: Threatened arthropods Threatened arthropods are defined here as any of a number of species within the phylum Arthropoda, whose extinction is likely in the foreseeable future. Estimating the number of threatened arthropod species is extremely difficult, primarily because a vast number of the species themselves are not yet named or described. Furthermore, according to Deyrup and Eisner, "The rate of destruction and degradation of natural habitats is currently so great that there are not nearly enough biologists to even catalog the arthropod species that are suddenly on the edge of extinction." In any case, independent estimates indicate that