• Biomass and taxa abundance (Bar-On et al. 2018)

  • Entity Year Global biomass Abundance of organisms
    Annelids 2018 200,000,000.0 1,000,000,000,000,000,000.0E+18
    Wild birds 2018 2,000,000.0 100,000,000,000.0
    Viruses 2018 200,000,000.0 9,999,999,999,999,999,635,896,294,965,248.0E+31
    Protists 2018 4,000,000,000.0 1,000,000,000,000,000,013,287,555,072.0E+27
    Plants 2018 450,000,000,000.0 10,000,000,000,000.0
    Nematodes 2018 20,000,000.0 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.0E+21
    Molluscs 2018 200,000,000.0 1,000,000,000,000,000,000.0E+18
    Livestock 2018 100,000,000.0 10,000,000,000.0
    Humans 2018 60,000,000.0 10,000,000,000.0
    Fungi 2018 12,000,000,000.0 1,000,000,000,000,000,013,287,555,072.0E+27
    Fish 2018 700,000,000.0 1,000,000,000,000,000.0E+15
    Cnidarians 2018 100,000,000.0 10,000,000,000,000,000.0E+16
    Bacteria 2018 70,000,000,000.0 1,000,000,000,000,000,019,884,624,838,656.0E+30
    Arthropods (terrestrial) 2018 200,000,000.0 1,000,000,000,000,000,000.0E+18
    Arthropods (marine) 2018 1,000,000,000.0 100,000,000,000,000,000,000.0E+20
    Archaea 2018 7,000,000,000.0 99,999,999,999,999,991,433,150,857,216.0E+29
    Wild mammals 2018 2,000,000.0 0
  • Estimates of the global biomass (measured in tonnes of carbon) and abundance (number of individuals) of different taxonomic groups.

    Due to large uncertainty for some groups, these are used as order-of-magnitude estimates and come with notable error margins.

  • Sources

    Data Published By: Bar-On, Y. M., Phillips, R., & Milo, R. (2018). The biomass distribution on Earth. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 201711842.

    Data publisher source:

    Link: http://www.pnas.org/content/115/25/6506

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