Posted on 09/21/2022 1:22:49 PM PDT by Red Badger
Counting ants is a bit like counting grains of sand on a beach. But six researchers have proved they were up for the task. They’ve come up with the latest—and most comprehensive—estimate of the number of ants in the world: 20 quadrillion. That’s 12 megatons of biomass—more than all the wild birds and mammals taken together.
Ants are important ecosystem engineers, moving dirt, distributing seeds, and recycling organic matter. There has been some research to see how ants are distributed around the world, but there was no global estimate of how many there are.
So for the work, researchers combed through 12,000 reports from databases in many languages, including Bulgarian and Indonesian, finding 489 studies with rigorous enough methods of collecting and counting ants to be included. Most of the studies were not focused on ants per se but on larger questions of biodiversity and evolution and just happened to sample ants. The team was surprised to find how concentrated ants are in the tropics, being most plentiful there in savannas and moist forests.
The new estimate is two to 20 times higher than previous ones, the team reports today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. But is likely more accurate, the authors contend, because it is the first “bottom-up” effort that relied on actual counts of ants caught around the world.
and tasty too
Gonna need more chocolate.........................
> estimate of the number of ants in the world: 20 quadrillion <
Aw, hell. I had 19 quadrillion in the office pool.
Good. Now, do termites. Their farts emit more ‘ghg’ than all human autos and trucks combined.
20 quadrillion..... I have at least that many Fire Ants in my back yard!..................
Just wait until they can register as Democrats!
“That’s 12 megatons of biomass—more than all the wild birds and mammals taken together.”
Hm. Humans add up to what? Maybe 400 megatons? And to maintain that weight, there must be lots of megatons of domesticated animals, far more than wild ones.
She’s trying to eliminate wood burning in Europe.
After this winter they may burn her at the stake LOL.
Which, coincidentally enough, is the same number of tax dollars that was spent on the research. Give or take a quadrillion.
So if they ban together and demand equal rights we are screwed.
When mankind is gone, ants will still rule the planet
Sounds fine to me.
And that is just the ants the responded to the Census.
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