United States Fish and Wildlife Service list of threatened and endangered arthropods species may be treated as endangered or threatened if it resembles in appearance a species which has been listed and enforcement personnel would have difficulty distinguishing between the listed and the unlisted species; if the effect of this difficulty is an additional threat to the listed species; and if such treatment of the unlisted species would improve protection for the listed species. United States Fish and Wildlife Service list of threatened and endangered arthropods List of threatened and endangered arthropods, including insects, arachnids, and crustaceans under the United States Endangered Species Act as of October 2013. Key to Listing Status
Threatened arthropods 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 there are