system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How do you estimate the percentage of species not found if you do not know the total the number of species (since they haven't been discovered)?
gpt
A field scientist will not likely have enough time to survey an entire rainforest. However, one can easily survey several 10ft by 10ft patches within the area. Suppose you're in an area that's as large as 1 mile by 1 mile. You select several 10x10ft patches and count all the insects in those locations. You find that on average, there are 5 species present that have already been identified, and 5 species present that are new to science. You can then extrapolate and assume that in the entire square mile patch of land, that only half of the species present have already been identified. So yes, there's some guesswork and statistics involved, but it can be very accurate. Of course, you can actually test how accurate the predictions were by fully surveying the entire area, but this is rarely done due to time and funding constraints.