[ExI] Eden, deep memes, exodus from the Ape God

[Kelly Anderson]

2012/1/15 Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com>
> On 15 January 2012 17:42, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
>> Cool passage Stuart!  Well done, me lad.
>>
>> If 1/5 of land based biomass, perhaps the formicidae family is the biggest fraction of all land based biomass, assuming we restrict the competition to the animal kingdom.
>
> I take, and share, the "philosophical" angle, but am perplexed about the plausibility of the specific figure.
>
> This would also mean that ants' biomass alone would beat all other insects together (termites, locustes, flies, mosquitoes, fleas, butterflies, bees, etc.) hands down by orders of magnitude...

I am absolutely certain that you are leaving out the biomass of single
celled creatures...

  "Not only does the Earth contain more bacterial organisms than all
others combined (scarcely surprising, given their minimal size and
mass); not only do bacteria live in more places and work in a greater
variety of metabolic ways; not only did bacteria alone constitute the
first half of life's history, with no slackening in diversity
thereafter; but also, and most surprisingly, total bacterial biomass
(even at such minimal weight per cell) may exceed all the rest of life
combined, even forest trees, once we include the subterranean
populations as well.  Need any more be said in making a case for the
modal bacter as life's constant center of maximal influence and
importance?"
  -Stephen Jay Gould
(http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_bacteria.html -- I
highly recommend the entire article)

-Kelly