
A tiny Amazon patch could house 40,000 insect species, many undiscovered
A Brazilian megaproject is surveying insects across a 10,000‑hectare central Amazon site from ground to canopy, deploying multi‑level traps and a blitz of methods. After 14 months they’ve collected about 5.5 million specimens, with around 600,000 slated for DNA sequencing, and preliminary data suggest as many as 40,000 species may inhabit this patch—roughly 0.7% of the world’s estimated six million insect species—work being carried out by ~400 taxonomists who will describe and name new species, often drawing on Indigenous languages, rivers and regional history.



