Author: Mara Johnson-Groh / Source: Science News for Students
If you were writing to an alien pen pal in a distant galaxy, how would you describe life on Earth?
Would you describe yourself? Your dog? Maybe birds or fish or snakes? The planet is teeming with diversity, but what would be most representative?According to a new study, you’d be better off describing something green.
Most of life doesn’t look like me or you — or even Fido. A recent census of all living things found that plants are most common, at least by mass. They weigh in at about 83 percent of the total. So how much do other life forms contribute? And where do humans fit in? The answer is a bit complex. It also depends on how you measure.
Over the years, scientists around the world have conducted surveys of individual species and ecosystems. However, no one had surveyed all of Earth’s life at once, notes Ron Milo. He’s a biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. Milo and his graduate student Yinon Bar-On decided to tackle that first all-inclusive tally.
It would be impossible to count each tree, mouse and bacterium. Instead, the researchers used math and statistics to make an educated…
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