The abundance, biomass, and distribution of ants on Earth

Patrick Schultheiss; Sabine S. Nooten; Runxi Wang; Mark K. L. Wong; Francois Brassard; Benoit Guénard

doi:10.1073/pnas.2201550119

The abundance, biomass, and distribution of ants on Earth

Patrick Schultheiss, Sabine S. Nooten, Runxi Wang, Mark K. L. Wong, Francois Brassard, Benoit Guénard

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Abstract

Knowledge on the distribution and abundance of organisms is fundamental to understanding their roles within ecosystems and their ecological importance for other taxa. Such knowledge is currently lacking for insects, which have long been regarded as the “little things that run the world”. Even for ubiquitous insects, such as ants, which are of tremendous ecological significance, there is currently neither a reliable estimate of their total number on Earth nor of their abundance in particular biomes or habitats. We compile data on ground-dwelling and arboreal ants to obtain an empirical estimate of global ant abundance. Our analysis is based on 489 studies, spanning all continents, major biomes, and habitats. We conservatively estimate total abundance of ground-dwelling ants at over 3 × 1015 and estimate the number of all ants on Earth to be almost 20 × 1015 individuals. The latter corresponds to a biomass of ∼12 megatons of dry carbon. This exceeds the combined biomass of wild birds and mammals and is equivalent to ∼20% of human biomass. Abundances of ground-dwelling ants are strongly concentrated in tropical and subtropical regions but vary substantially across habitats. The density of leaf-litter ants is highest in forests, while the numbers of actively ground-foraging ants are highest in arid regions. This study highlights the central role ants play in terrestrial ecosystems but also major ecological and geographic gaps in our current knowledge. Our results provide a crucial baseline for exploring environmental drivers of ant-abundance patterns and for tracking the responses of insects to environmental change.

Original language	English
Article number	e2201550119
Pages (from-to)	1-9
Number of pages	9
Journal	Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Volume	119
Issue number	40
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2201550119
Publication status	Published - 4 Oct 2022

Bibliographical note

This work was supported by a Division of Ecology and Biodiversity Postdoctoral Fellow Research Award from the University of Hong Kong and by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation)—project No. 499479766 to P.S. Further support came from the Early Career Scheme of the Research Grant Council of Hong Kong (No. ECS-27106417), and fieldwork in SE Asia was supported by a National Geographic Grant to B.G. S.S.N. received funding by the DFG—project No. 445715161. M.K.L.W. is supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Forrest Research Foundation. The authors are grateful to Crisanto Gómez and Xavier Espadaler for providing data on ant body mass and to Mostafa Sharaf for providing abundance data.

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title = "The abundance, biomass, and distribution of ants on Earth",

abstract = "Knowledge on the distribution and abundance of organisms is fundamental to understanding their roles within ecosystems and their ecological importance for other taxa. Such knowledge is currently lacking for insects, which have long been regarded as the “little things that run the world”. Even for ubiquitous insects, such as ants, which are of tremendous ecological significance, there is currently neither a reliable estimate of their total number on Earth nor of their abundance in particular biomes or habitats. We compile data on ground-dwelling and arboreal ants to obtain an empirical estimate of global ant abundance. Our analysis is based on 489 studies, spanning all continents, major biomes, and habitats. We conservatively estimate total abundance of ground-dwelling ants at over 3 × 1015 and estimate the number of all ants on Earth to be almost 20 × 1015 individuals. The latter corresponds to a biomass of ∼12 megatons of dry carbon. This exceeds the combined biomass of wild birds and mammals and is equivalent to ∼20% of human biomass. Abundances of ground-dwelling ants are strongly concentrated in tropical and subtropical regions but vary substantially across habitats. The density of leaf-litter ants is highest in forests, while the numbers of actively ground-foraging ants are highest in arid regions. This study highlights the central role ants play in terrestrial ecosystems but also major ecological and geographic gaps in our current knowledge. Our results provide a crucial baseline for exploring environmental drivers of ant-abundance patterns and for tracking the responses of insects to environmental change.",

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The abundance, biomass, and distribution of ants on Earth

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