[imagesource: Francois Brassard]

The human race has proven to be rather adept at destroying the natural world around us.

From larger animals like whales and rhinos right down to bees, population numbers have dwindled at an alarming rate and we’re realising that it may be too late to save certain species from eventual extinction.

Ever heard of the insect apocalypse? Good times.

One animal that appears to be doing alright, despite our worst efforts, is the humble ant. A paper released on Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences outlines the staggering number of ants on Earth.

Before the big reveal, have a guess just for fun.

Over to The Washington Post:

A new estimate for the total number of ants burrowing and buzzing on Earth comes to a whopping total of nearly 20 quadrillion individuals.

That staggering sum — 20,000,000,000,000,000, or 20,000 trillion — reveals ants’ astonishing ubiquity even as scientists grow concerned a possible mass die off of insects could upend ecosystems.

For the paper, a group of scientists analysed 489 studies in order to calculate the total mass of ants on Earth, which came in at around 12 megatons of dry carbon.

Fun facts – that’s more than the combined weight of all the world’s wild birds and mammals, and for every human, there are roughly 2,5 million ants.

To tally insects as abundant as ants, there are two ways to do it: Get down on the ground to sample leaf litter — or set tiny pitfall traps (often just a plastic cup) and wait for the ants to slip in. Researchers have gotten their boots dirty with surveys in nearly every corner of the world, though some spots in Africa and Asia lack data…

Image: Pixabay /CC0 Public Domain

Ants, like humans, have marched across virtually every continent and all sorts of habitats.

Myrmecologist EO Wilson says the only place you likely won’t find ants is Antarctica or the high Arctic.  Myrmecology is the study of ants.

The paper does fail to answer one pretty important question – are global ant numbers dwindling?

That’s the next research question the team wants to answer. “We did not yet attempt to show this temporal shift in ant abundance,” Sabine Nooten, an insect ecologist and co-lead author of the study, said by Zoom. “That would be something that would come next.”

Yes, would seem to be the safe answer here.

There are roughly 15 700 known species and subspecies of ants. The humble creature plays a pivotal role in accelerating decomposition so other species can feed, as well as aerating soil and spreading seeds underground so they can germinate.

[source:washpost]