Despite the large uncertainty associated with the total biomass of bacteria, we estimate that plants are the dominant kingdom in terms of biomass at an ≈90% probability (more details are provided in the SI Appendix). Other groups, in descending order, are fungi, archaea, protists, animals, and viruses, which together account for the remaining <10%. The second major biomass component is bacteria (≈70 Gt C SI Appendix, Tables S3–S7), constituting ≈15% of the global biomass. The sum of the biomass across all taxa on Earth is ≈550 Gt C, of which ≈80% (≈450 Gt C SI Appendix, Table S2) are plants, dominated by land plants (embryophytes). Visualization performed using the online tool at /. We estimate that the contribution of reptiles and amphibians to the total animal biomass is negligible, as we discuss in the SI Appendix. Related groups such as vertebrates are located next to each other.

( B) Absolute biomass of different animal taxa. A visual depiction without components with very slow metabolic activity, such as plant stems and tree trunks, is shown in SI Appendix, Fig. Values are based on the estimates presented in Table 1 and detailed in the SI Appendix. This type of visualization is similar to pie charts but has a much higher dynamic range (a comparison is shown in SI Appendix, Fig. ( A) Absolute biomasses of different taxa are represented using a Voronoi diagram, with the area of each cell being proportional to that taxa global biomass (the specific shape of each polygon carries no meaning). Graphical representation of the global biomass distribution by taxa. Finally, we highlight that the mass of humans is an order of magnitude higher than that of all wild mammals combined and report the historical impact of humanity on the global biomass of prominent taxa, including mammals, fish, and plants.įig. Our analysis reveals that the global marine biomass pyramid contains more consumers than producers, thus increasing the scope of previous observations on inverse food pyramids. We show that terrestrial biomass is about two orders of magnitude higher than marine biomass and estimate a total of ≈6 Gt C of marine biota, doubling the previous estimated quantity. We find that the kingdoms of life concentrate at different locations on the planet plants (≈450 Gt C, the dominant kingdom) are primarily terrestrial, whereas animals (≈2 Gt C) are mainly marine, and bacteria (≈70 Gt C) and archaea (≈7 Gt C) are predominantly located in deep subsurface environments. Here, we assemble the overall biomass composition of the biosphere, establishing a census of the ≈550 gigatons of carbon (Gt C) of biomass distributed among all of the kingdoms of life. However, a global, quantitative view of how the biomass of different taxa compare with one another is still lacking. A census of the biomass on Earth is key for understanding the structure and dynamics of the biosphere.

Milo plant