12/02/2023
All The Arthropods That Call Earth's Land Home Weigh More Than Humans And Livestock
Without the buzzing, fluttering, scuttling or creeping crawlies our world would be in strife. Yet we don't even know some of the most basic things about these arthropods like butterflies, spiders and centipedes, such as how many of these important components of our world's biosphere are even out there.
So researchers crunched some numbers to arrive at a startling conclusion: despite their miniscule size, the collective global mass of all terrestrial arthropods is about the same as all humans and their farm animals combined.
No wonder they have such a massive impact on the world we live in.
"Arthropods have been described as 'the little things that run the world' because of their central role in multiple ecological processes," explains Weizmann Institute of Science environmental scientist Yuval Rosenberg.
"We must take them into account if we're to fully understand humanity's impact on the planet and the possible consequences of climate change."
So Rosenberg and colleagues amassed 7,000 measurements from the scientific literature. From deserts to farms to rain forests, these records include all the major terrestrial habitat types, scattered across 300 locations around the world.
They categorized the records into soil (including plant litter) and above ground (surface and plant associated bugs) arthropods, because of the very different sampling techniques involved for each group.
The data suggests most of that 1 billion tons worth of arthropods are found snugly tucked on or within our planet's skin.