Number and biomass of prokaryotes in the world

Range Table - link
Organism prokaryote
Reference William B. Whitman, David C. Coleman, and William J. Wiebe. Prokaryotes: The unseen majority. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1998 June 9 95(12): p.6581 table 5PubMed ID9618454
Method In the soil and subsurface, the cellular carbon is assumed to be one-half of the dry weight.
Comments Sum of aquatic habitats, oceanic subsurface, soil & terrestrial subsurface. "The amount of carbon in prokaryotes can be estimated from the cell numbers in soil, aquatic systems, and the subsurface. In the soil and subsurface, the cellular carbon is assumed to be one-half of the dry weight. In soil, the average dry weight of a prokaryotic cell is 2×10^-13g or 200 fg (ref 18). Thus, the total prokaryotic cellular carbon in soil is 26×10^15g of C or 26 Pg of C (Table 5). In the subsurface, there is only one measurement of the average dry weight of cells, that of 172 fg for cells from a terrestrial aquifer (ref 36). This value yields an estimate of the terrestrial prokaryotic cellular carbon of 22–215 Pg of C (Table 5). The estimate for the marine subsurface, 303 Pg of C (Table 5), may be compared with 56 Pg of C, the value obtained by Parkes et al. (33)."
Entered by Uri M
ID 104960