Species

The Species section gathers the atlas's entries on individual kinds of organism: animals, plants, fungi and protists each described as the distinct, named species they are, from mammals and birds down to algae and single-celled protists. These entries belong together because they share one editorial shape, a single organism treated on its own terms, which is what separates this section from Biomes (the large regions species live in), Ecosystems (the communities species form together in a place) and Phenomena (the processes species take part in, such as migration or a biogeochemical cycle). A reader who wants to know what a tiger, a shiitake mushroom or a strand of kelp actually is, rather than where it lives or what it does, belongs here.