Ants are physically small, but they are quite numerous. A new study estimates that there are about 20 quadrillion ants on Earth at any given time.
That estimate is 2 to 20 times higher than previous ones, according to research published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“We were very surprised at the large number of ants we found,” Sabine S. Nooten of the University of Würzburg in Germany told CNN. Nooten is a co-author of the study.
The previous global estimate was made by the famous biologists Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson, that there are between 1 quadrillion and 10 quadrillion ants.
The new study based the new estimate on observational evidence from a dataset. The authors identified and evaluated 465 studies covering 1,306 sampling sites spanning entire continents and major ant-inhabited biomes.
For example, the number of terrestrial ants that densely populate tropical and subtropical regions such as the South American forests has been estimated at around 3 quadrillion.
“We can already see change over time in our dataset,” says study co-author Patrick Schultheiss. Schultheiss stressed that changes in agriculture or the way forests are cut may have an impact on the number of ants.
According to the study, ants presumably exceed the combined combined biomass of wild birds and mammals.
“This new study, based on nearly 500 studies worldwide, gives us the best answer to this difficult question yet. What’s surprising is not only the total number, but also the proportion of biomass represented by ants, which is one-fifth of the biomass of all humans. How ants really are.” It underlines the importance.”
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