How many do you think there are ant in the world? Is it a few tens of billions or hundreds of billions? None of them. Recently, a team of research teams from Hong Kong University estimated an astonishing answer: 20,000 Gigabytes.
Have you ever thought about how many ants are on the earth? A team of research from the University of Hong Kong believes that they found the answer to this question. The picture shows the leaf-cutting ant distributed in Ibague, Colombia, South America. This ant can lift objects 20 times heavier than it.
Count, how many ants are there on the earth?
Have you ever been curious about how many ants there are on the earth? In the past, no scientist has calculated the number of ants around the world, but recently six scientists have worked together to take on this challenge. They have spent 6 years estimating the total number of ants around the world.
This Monday (19), a research team from the University of Hong Kong published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, which calculated that the total number of ants on the earth was at least 20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. The research team believes that although this number looks amazing, it may still underestimate the total number of this insect.
episodes of global research power have amazing numbers
The research team said that they did not actually collect and calculate in various places, but instead analyzed reports from various countries and found 489 available studies to estimate the number of ants worldwide. The research reports they used rigorous methods to investigate the number of ants locally.
Patrick Schultheiss, the first author of the study and a former researcher at the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Hong Kong, said that the study "is really a result of the efforts of scientists around the world." He was very surprised to get the number 20,000 Gigabytes. Because if this number is converted into weight, the total weight of all ants on the earth will be far more than the total weight of all birds and mammals on the earth, and is equivalent to 1/5 of the total weight of the world's population.
Guess, where is the most ants?
In addition, the research team also made new discoveries after analyzing 489 studies. They observed that although ants are everywhere and everywhere in the world, their most numerous places are actually concentrated in tropical and subtropical areas, while in cold areas, such as the Antarctic and the Arctic, their number distribution is the least.
In addition, scientists have also found that the number of ants is very abundant in forests or desert areas, but in artificial architectural cities, the number of ants will be significantly less than the former.
But the research team also admitted that in the hundreds of research data they used, most of the ant information collected came from samples on the ground. In other words, they lacked research data on ants on trees or under the ground, which may affect the final calculated results.
Although the ant is small, it is the insect species with the highest biomass on the earth and occupies an important position in the ecosystem.
Ants play an important role in the ecosystem
In the past, Edward O. Wilson, a famous American entomologist, and ant authoritative researcher, once said that "ans are the smallest creatures that dominate the world." There are currently 15,700 known species of ants around the world. They play an important role in the ecosystem and can help spread seeds, increase nutrients in the soil, or serve as foods on which other organisms rely for survival.
research team also said that due to the slow disappearance of insect habitats around the world, fragmentation, high chemical drug use rate, invasion of alien species and climate change, the number of insects has dropped sharply. They believe that it is necessary for scientists to monitor the number of insects and global distribution, so that they will know which species are facing threats."This study gives us a benchmark for comparing the number and distribution of ants around the world. In the future, we can continue to study repeatedly, go to the same place, use the same research method to observe their changes year by year."
Care for ants Start with you and me
Research team also hopes to arouse more people's concern for ants. Schultes said that among the hundreds of research data they analyzed, most of the studies did not focus on the ant themselves, but when studying the biodiversity of a certain region or understanding its ecological evolution, they left the relevant data samples because they needed to calculate the number of ants.
"We hope this study will raise awareness of the global distribution of ants and motivate other scientists and citizens to set out to the places we are most unfamiliar with to study the ants there. Those methods of calculating ants are not difficult, and our research shows that even the simple and basic data can give amazing information. Ultimately, we need to build a global data to help us know what to do in the future and what we should protect." Schulthes said.
How many ants are there on the earth?
According to the latest research published in September 2022 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, there are at least 20,000 ants on the earth.
The place with the most ants in the world?
has the largest number of ants in tropical and subtropical regions.
How many kinds of ants are there in the world?
At present, there are as many as 15,700 known species of ant in the world.
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