| abstract | - When it comes to Linnaean taxonomy, few of us outside of the related fields know how many species it covers (for the record, taxonomists estimate there have been hundreds of millions of species of life forms on this planet up to now). The number of species we are familiar with makes up less than 1% of even the known species. Thus fiction will end up showing a few stock species, due to that familiarity. Some groups of plants and animals can have thousands of known species, and fiction will only mention about two. Often this results in Misplaced Wildlife, as the particular species shown wouldn't live in a certain place, but we wouldn't know of the other species that do (unless the writers are Showing Their Work). There is also a bit of a sliding scale. On the low end, entire phyla (aka divisions) can have just one or two species represented. On the high end, a single family can have about half a dozen species commonly shown. This is regardless of the actual number of species per group. Filming on location can produce a fair sampling of the local flora, including the species no one much has heard of, but the plants named will still come from a small pool. Often this trope is because a particular species is featured in a work that puts that species in the popular consciousness, but there are other causes. Can be Justified. Many kinds of creatures are rarely seen in fiction because they are just as rarely seen in real life. (When was the last time you met a caecilian, mantis shrimp, or a tuatara?) A Sub-Trope of Small Reference Pools A Super-Trope to Stock Dinosaurs. Contrast Improbable Taxonomy Skills, Seldom-Seen Species. Examples, split along taxonomic groupings:
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