I cannot pick up colonists from several species - is this a bug or a misunderstanding?

[scotten_usa]

I have 5 races in my empire but only 2 appear in the list of choices in the screen shot below AND I cannot pickup people using an existing colony ship from 3 of the races. Initially I thought it was due to a virus outbreak but that ended. You can see the Teekan world I really want to colonize from, but I can't get it work.

Savegame here
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uTks2_ ... sp=sharing

[Cauldyth]

What is the Teekan population on the planet? Can't quite see it in the screenshot. To be able to load colonists, the planet must have more than 500M inhabitants + the number of colonists you will be loading. So for the early game colony ships, there needs to be 530M inhabitants of that race.

[scotten_usa]

Oh thank you, that must be it. The Merturov virus must have decimated my population & I didn't know what the minimum number was to be able to pick up.