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Flagged as overly technical: "the introduction especially should be understandable by educated people without having to follow links". This is a comparatively general article covering tens of thousands of species called ANTS. So it is a starting point for many people—educated but not biologists—who want to know more about ants. I have flagged the introduction but the same argument applies throughout the article. Humphrey Tribble ( talk) 03:43, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
From biomass information in the Cattle wikipedia article:
"It has been estimated that out of all animal species on Earth, Bos taurus has the largest biomass at roughly 400 million tonnes, followed closely by Euphausia superba (Antarctic krill) at 379 million tonnes, and Homo sapiens (humans) at 373 million tonnes."
From this article:
"Their ecological dominance is demonstrated by their biomass: Ants are estimated to contribute 15–20 % (on average and nearly 25% in the tropics) of terrestrial animal biomass, exceeding that of the vertebrates.[25] Myrmecologist E. O. Wilson estimated that the total number of individual ants alive in the world at any one time is between one and ten quadrillion (short scale) (i.e., between 10^15 and 10^16). According to this estimate, the total biomass of all the ants in the world is approximately equal to the total biomass of the entire human race.[26] According to this estimate, there are also approximately 1 million ants for every human on Earth.[27] A 2022 study based on a systematic sampling dataset suggested a higher figure of 20 quadrillion ants on earth at any given time."
The statement "...exceeding that of the vertebrates." seems substantially incorrect even if the 20 quadrillion ant estimate is used. I reasonably read (close skim of unrelated elements) reference 25 at https://NCBI.NLM.NIH.Gov/pmc/articles/PMC34089/ but found no suggestion that ants exceed the biomass of vertebrates - the reference doesn't seem to support that aspect of the biomass statements in this Wikipedia article.
Consider that cattle and Homo Sapiens each by themselves seem to very roughly equal ant biomass before accounting for any other vertebrates (discounting fish and sea mammals in vast waters where no ants reside), so quite rough though biomass accounting appears to be, ants seem to rank at less than half of the mass of non-aquatic vertebrates - perhaps substantially less. (And much less than that for all Earth vertebrates, and further less for all Earth biomass.)
In addition in many uses "terrestrial" excludes animals which are aquatic, arboreal, or aerial. The aquatic exclusion could be used, but many ants are aerial or arboreal in some measure, so "terrestrial" fails to provide specifically defined boundaries as required for ant and other animal biomass accounting. (In my view reference 25 is also flawed in that regard.)
So, though imperfectly aligned to reference 25, but evidently much more accurate overall, I suggest revising that first sentence to:
'Their ecological significance is suggested by their biomass: Ants are estimated to contribute 15–20 % (on average and nearly 25% in the tropics) of non-aquatic animal biomass.[25]'
I'll await reactions that my sense of this seems either correct or flawed, or other comments, for a week or two before revising that sentence in the article.
Cheers! -- H Bruce Campbell ( talk) 13:06, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
Need to add this one. It IS known to attack and eat PEOPLE. Seen it on a Documentary Channel recently. 216.247.72.142 ( talk) 02:02, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
Because ants have many different behaviors maybe we should mention how they can have super colonies, multi queen colonies, and even sometimes multi species colonies with certain species. TuesdayBruv1 ( talk) 00:22, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
How it talk about the bug 170.177.227.111 ( talk) 21:29, 31 January 2024 (UTC)