| Range |
~10^18 animals
|
| Organism |
Biosphere |
| Reference |
Kevin J. Gaston & Tim M. Blackburn, How many birds are there? Biodiversity & Conservation, April 1997, Volume 6, Issue 4, pp 615–625 p.617 top paragraph |
| Primary Source |
Williams, C.B. (1960) The range and pattern of insect abundance. Am. Nat. 94, 137-51. |
| Method |
Primary source abstract: "Recent work on the relative abundance of species in samples taken from animal and plant populations in the field shows that there is nearly always evidence of a regular pattern of frequency distribution. This has usually been expressed in terms of the logarithmic series (which fit best to smaller samples) or the log-normal (which fits better to larger samples). The present article is a speculative attempt to extend these two series to the insect population of the whole world." |
| Comments |
P.617 top paragraph: "As far as [investigators] are aware, the only explicit attempt to calculate the overall number of individuals in a large taxon is that of Williams (primary source). He estimated that the global insect fauna consists of around 1×10^18 animals, based in part on the assumption that the global insect fauna is around three million species, which is probably unrealistically low." Primary source abstract: "It is suggested as a working basis that at any moment the insect population of the world is 10^18 individuals and that there are perhaps as many as three million species." |
| Entered by |
Uri M |
| ID |
116941 |