You coleopterans come here, talkin’ big about your beetle shapes and species. I’m only interest in biomass, and class Isoptera has that on lock, with roughly 77% of total soil arthropod biomass.
Yuval Rosenberg et al., The global biomass and number of terrestrial arthropods.Sci. Adv.9,eabq4049(2023).DOI:10.1126/sciadv.abq4049Isopods are cheating. They’re ancient, like older than bones. Colepotera are the new kids on the block with the shiny new sports car wings.
Fun facts, though, for readers: Of the roughly 1 million named insect species on Earth, about 400,000 are beetles. https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/living-world/2024/why-are-there-so-many-types-of-beetles
No, what’s cheating is sticking with Insecta. It’s a short walk up and over to get to Crustacea->Copepoda and we can have more biomass than terrestrial life.
ed: I applaud your work. Science-high-five.
Lazy passive sci comm. :)
I feel the need to remake this using Brennan Lee Mulligan from Dropout.tv.
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