It is expected that the world’s population will exceed 8 billion in the coming months, but compared to the population of ants on Earth, the number is not impressive, writes the Reuters agency, quoted by Agerpres.

Researchers have made the most detailed estimate yet of the global population of ants—insects that live almost everywhere on the planet—and estimate the total to be a staggering 20 quadrillion, or about 2.5 million ants for every human.

This should come as no surprise, given the ubiquity of these lively and sociable insects and the fact that they have flourished since the time of the dinosaurs, with the oldest fossil ant dating back to around 100 million years ago, from the Cretaceous period.

“Ants clearly play a central role in almost all terrestrial ecosystems,” said entomologist Patrick Schultheiss of the University of Würzburg in Germany and the University of Hong Kong, one of the lead authors of the study, published this week in the journal Proceedings of National. Academy of Sciences

“They are very important for nutrient cycling, decomposition processes, plant seed dispersal and soil disturbance. Ants are also an extremely diverse group of insects, with different species serving a variety of functions. But mainly their sheer numbers make them ecologically key players,” Schultheis said.

An arthropod that lives almost everywhere in the world

There are more than 12,000 known species of ants, most of which are black, brown, or red, with a body divided into three parts. Ranging from one-quarter inch (1 mm) to 1.2 inches (3 cm) in size, ants usually live in soil, leaves, rotting plants, and sometimes in people’s kitchens.

Ants, whose closest relatives are bees and wasps, live in almost every region of the Earth, as any picnicker knows, with the exception of Antarctica, Greenland and Iceland and a few isolated countries.

“I was amazed that the biomass of ants is higher than the biomass of wild mammals and birds combined, and that it reaches 20% of the biomass of humans. It gives you an idea of ​​their level of influence.” said Sabine Nooten, an insect ecologist and co-author of the study, a researcher at the Universities of Würzburg and Hong Kong.

“I find the sheer variety of ants fascinating. They can be tiny or huge and exhibit the most bizarre adaptations,” Nooten added, using the example of a widespread genus of ants, Strumigenys, known for their wide mouths equipped with spines used to hunt small invertebrates.

The researchers based their analysis on 489 studies of ant populations from all continents where these insects live.

“Our data set represents a huge collective effort of thousands of researchers. We were then able to extrapolate the number of ants for different regions of the world and estimate the total global abundance and biomass,” said Schultheiss.

Ants, called “the little creatures that rule the world”

According to research, tropical regions have many more ants than other regions, and forests and arid regions have more ants compared to urban areas.

“There are certain regions of the world where we have little data and we cannot make reliable estimates for all continents. Africa is one such example. We’ve known for a long time that this is an ant-rich continent, but it’s also very little studied,” Schultheis said.

“Some ants can certainly be very annoying, but it’s a very human-centric perspective,” Schultheis said.

“Most ants are actually extremely beneficial, even to us humans,” Schultheis added.

“Think about the amount of organic matter that 20 quadrillion ants transport, remove, process and eat. In fact, ants are so essential to the smooth functioning of biological processes that they can be considered the engineers of ecosystems,” he said.

Ant scientist EO Wilson, who died in 2021, once called them “the little creatures that rule the world.”