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Research Article

The biomass distribution on Earth

View ORCID ProfileYinon M. Bar-On, Rob Phillips, and View ORCID ProfileRon Milo
  1. aDepartment of Plant and Environmental Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science, 76100 Rehovot, Israel;
  2. bDepartment of Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125;
  3. cDivision of Biology and Biological Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125

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PNAS June 19, 2018 115 (25) 6506-6511; first published May 21, 2018; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1711842115
Yinon M. Bar-On
aDepartment of Plant and Environmental Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science, 76100 Rehovot, Israel;
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  • ORCID record for Yinon M. Bar-On
Rob Phillips
bDepartment of Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125;
cDivision of Biology and Biological Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125
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Ron Milo
aDepartment of Plant and Environmental Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science, 76100 Rehovot, Israel;
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  • ORCID record for Ron Milo
  • For correspondence: ron.milo@weizmann.ac.il
  1. Edited by Paul G. Falkowski, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ, and approved April 13, 2018 (received for review July 3, 2017)

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Significance

The composition of the biosphere is a fundamental question in biology, yet a global quantitative account of the biomass of each taxon is still lacking. We assemble a census of the biomass of all kingdoms of life. This analysis provides a holistic view of the composition of the biosphere and allows us to observe broad patterns over taxonomic categories, geographic locations, and trophic modes.

Abstract

A census of the biomass on Earth is key for understanding the structure and dynamics of the biosphere. However, a global, quantitative view of how the biomass of different taxa compare with one another is still lacking. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

  • ecology
  • biomass
  • biosphere
  • quantitative biology

Footnotes

  • ↵1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: ron.milo{at}weizmann.ac.il.
  • Author contributions: Y.M.B.-O., R.P., and R.M. designed research; Y.M.B.-O. and R.M. performed research; Y.M.B.-O. and R.M. analyzed data; and Y.M.B.-O., R.P., and R.M. wrote the paper.

  • The authors declare no conflict of interest.

  • This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.

  • Data deposition: All of the data used to generate our estimates, as well as the code used for analysis, are available on GitHub at https://github.com/milo-lab/biomass_distribution.

  • See Commentary on page 6328.

  • This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2018/07/13/1711842115.DC1.

  • Copyright © 2018 the Author(s). Published by PNAS.

This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND).

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The biomass distribution on Earth
Yinon M. Bar-On, Rob Phillips, Ron Milo
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Jun 2018, 115 (25) 6506-6511; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1711842115

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The biomass distribution on Earth
Yinon M. Bar-On, Rob Phillips, Ron Milo
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Jun 2018, 115 (25) 6506-6511; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1711842115
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