While tiny insects and butterflies may seem like they don’t weigh anything, their combined weight is more than all humans and animals combined.
It’s hard to imagine what our world would be like without the buzzing, fluttering, running and goosebumps. Science Alert writes that although arthropods are usually very small, all these butterflies, spiders, centipedes and many other species play an important role in our planet’s biosphere.
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In the new study, the scientists focused on summing up some numbers that reflect the importance of arthropods on the planet. For example, they calculated the total weight of all the arthropods on Earth and concluded that their masses were approximately equal to, and perhaps slightly more, than the sum of all humans and livestock. It’s no surprise, then, that they have a huge impact on the world we live in.
According to Yuval Rosenberg, an environmental scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science, and co-author of the study, arthropods are often referred to as “the little creatures that rule the world,” and there is some truth to that.
In the study, Rosenberg and colleagues collected nearly 7,000 measurements described in the scientific literature—these records include all major terrestrial habitat types distributed over three hundred locations around the world, including deserts, farms, and rainforests.
Also, scientists divided arthropods into two groups:
- soil (including plant litter);
- above ground (surface, plant related insects).
The researchers found that most arthropods, with a total mass of about one billion tons, live firmly pressed into the “skin of our planet,” or inside it. For example, about 40% of the soil biomass of arthropods are termites, 10% more than ants. In fact, every square meter of topsoil contains an average of tens of thousands of arthropods, the vast majority of which are mites and springtails.
Scientists state that the arthropod community living in and on the soil has about 10 quintillion individuals. At the same time, all these tiny creatures play an important role in the ecosystem because they help process nutrients in the soil, which means they make an important contribution to the carbon cycle.
According to Rosenberg, the numbers he and his colleagues found should help scientists understand exactly what role this biomass plays for the planet. For example, understanding the distribution of termites in the future will allow us to assess their contribution to the planet’s global warming. What’s more, we know that hundreds of birds, reptiles and amphibians depend directly on this biomass for food. Also, arthropods help break down and recycle dead plants, animals and feces, which is very important to us.
Scientists hope that digitizing the arthropod population can provide a basis from which we can predict future changes in the arthropod community and how these changes will affect global processes on Earth.
Previously Focus He wrote that the European Union is blamed for the mass extinction of frogs around the world.
Source: Focus
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