Researchers have made an amazing discovery - the smallest and largest living creatures on Earth
As part of the study, experts led bybiologists from Rutgers University in New Jersey and the University of British Columbia divided all living creatures in terrestrial, marine and underground environments into 36 categories. Within each group, they determined the largest, smallest and most common body size. Then, by combining this information with pre-existing data on the biomass of each group, the scientists estimated how much of the Earth's biomass each category made up.
In the 1960s, aquatic ecologists discovered that the generalThe concentration of biomass remains constant at very different scales, which means that its amount must be evenly distributed among different species. The authors of the new study thought they would confirm an assumption made in the 20th century. However, the data showed a different picture - nature tends to go to extremes. Marine and soil bacteria, considered small, have more biomass than insects and medium-sized animals.
The study also showed that thisThe pattern holds true for different types of species and is even more obvious in land creatures than in sea creatures. As for humans, the size of Homo sapiens may be large compared to other species, but human biomass cannot compete with other biological groups, such as soil and marine protozoa, which are invisible to the eye. The largest organisms that scientists have noted are whales and corals.
How this study differs from other similar studiesprojects is that it includes groups such as underwater microbes and producers such as algae and seagrass, which were excluded from previous studies, although they account for almost half of the ocean's biomass.
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