How many insects?????

JeffH · #1 (**permalink**) 14-01-2008, 07:30 PM

Insects are one of the many subjects about which I know very little

Earlier this evening I caught a bit of BBC 1's "One Show" and they had quite a long feature on cockroaches.

Their in-house expert (who's name escapes me) commented that there are ONE AND A HALF BILLION insects for every human on the planet - that's a mind-bogglingly huge number - can it possibly be true?

Jeff

PS. Apologies if there's no such word as 'mind-bogglingly' - but you know what I mean

Paul mabbott · #2 (**permalink**) 14-01-2008, 08:01 PM

I've never been quite sure what a 'billion' is - seems to mean different things to different people. A thousand million - 1,000,000,000? or ten million - 10,000,000? or two million - 2,000,000.

Quite a lot

obviously but we need to know ...

Quote:

Originally Posted by JeffH

Insects are one of the many subjects about which I know very little

Earlier this evening I caught a bit of BBC 1's "One Show" and they had quite a long feature on cockroaches.

Their in-house expert (who's name escapes me) commented that there are ONE AND A HALF BILLION insects for every human on the planet - that's a mind-bogglingly huge number - can it possibly be true?

Jeff

PS. Apologies if there's no such word as 'mind-bogglingly' - but you know what I mean

JeffH · #3 (**permalink**) 14-01-2008, 08:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JeffH

..... ONE AND A HALF BILLION insects for every human on the planet....Jeff

Hang on Paul.....I'll count my one and a half billion and let you know

Jeff

tachybaptus · #4 (**permalink**) 14-01-2008, 08:09 PM

Hi,

according to our resident entomologist at work 9 out of every 10 organisms is an insect - its his justification for every pay rise request as he says he has to work harder on his surveys than we do!

I seem to remember my economic entomology lecturer quoting similar figures -so it might be true.

Paul

Blackbrook Eye · #5 (**permalink**) 14-01-2008, 08:18 PM

Hi Jalstar, if you spent a couple of hours in my hide at Blackbrook Res. you wouldnt be so sceptical about insect numbers, I assure you

Susie · #6 (**permalink**) 14-01-2008, 08:22 PM

Aren't insects just incredible! I remember reading somewhere about the number of springtails that exist, but widely go un-noticed. There is something like 300 million to 1.4 billion per acre of the earth's surface. Don't quote me on that.

Now are you scared by how outnumbered we are?

A useless fact to bore people with at parties: The oldest fossil of an insect found so far is 400 million years old is a springtail.

paulchandler6 · #7 (**permalink**) 14-01-2008, 08:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JeffH

ONE AND A HALF BILLION insects for every human on the planet - that's a mind-bogglingly huge number - can it possibly be true?

I can quite believe that figure. There are probably millions more of just Ants than Humans on the planet yet alone the rest.

Whos for counting bacteria then.

Paul

Ukwildlifeo · #8 (**permalink**) 14-01-2008, 08:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Susie

Aren't insects just incredible! I remember reading somewhere about the number of springtails that exist, but widely go un-noticed. There is something like 300 million to 1.4 billion per acre of the earth's surface. Don't quote me on that.

Now are you scared by how outnumbered we are?

A useless fact to bore people with at parties: The oldest fossil of an insect found so far is 400 million years old is a springtail.

Too be even more boring at parties you could point out a springtail isn't an insect but still part of the group hexapods which includes insects....how the hell did I ever get a girlfriend! lol

as for 1.5 billion per person I think thats a conservative estimate. Theres ant colonys of 1000s everywhere there lan not covered by ice, sometimes in ridiculous densities, super colonies that take up 100s of hectares. And thenres aphids, flys, the billions of things in the soil we never see.....

Susie · #9 (**permalink**) 14-01-2008, 08:48 PM

Hehe, please forgive my ignorance. At times I even forget myself to the point where I call spiders insects.

pressld2 · #10 (**permalink**) 14-01-2008, 09:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tachybaptus

according to our resident entomologist at work 9 out of every 10 organisms is an insect - its his justification for every pay rise request as he says he has to work harder on his surveys than we do!

Multi-cellular land organisms, very probably. But I think bacteria and plankton outnumber the insects.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paul mabbott

I've never been quite sure what a 'billion' is - seems to mean different things to different people. A thousand million - 1,000,000,000? or ten million - 10,000,000? or two million - 2,000,000.

Quite a lot

obviously but we need to know ...

The traditional English (and possibly European) definition of a billion is a million million - that's 1,000,000,000,000. However, these days the American definition of one thousand million (1,000,000,000) is pretty much universally accepted. It's certainly what economists and scientists would mean when they use the word.

Dave P.

JeffH · #11 (**permalink**) 14-01-2008, 10:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pressld2

The traditional English (and possibly European) definition of a billion is a million million - that's 1,000,000,000,000. However, these days the American definition of one thousand million (1,000,000,000) is pretty much universally accepted. It's certainly what economists and scientists would mean when they use the word. Dave P.

Oh Dave, you've confused me now - I'll have to start again - 1,2,3...........

Jeff

Venger · #12 (**permalink**) 14-01-2008, 11:29 PM

To quote Sir David Attenborough:
'For every pound of people on Earth, there are 300 pounds of insects'

- Life in the Undergrowth

Mmmm crunchy!

thes3raph1m · #13 (**permalink**) 15-01-2008, 12:18 AM

heres a joke about billions

george bush is having his daily briefing when his secretary of defense stands up and says
"sir, today there was a firefight in iraq, 12 insurgents were killed but sir, we lost 3 brazilian soldiers in the fight, i have sent our condolences to the brazilian ambasador and... "

all of a sudden, mr bush looks horrified and buries his head in his hands, the secretary of defense asks,
"sir, are you crying sir?"
mr bush looks up with tears running down his face and asks
"exactly how many is a brazilian?"

hehehe...

Wild-Woman · #14 (**permalink**) 15-01-2008, 06:22 AM

There's many, many thousands of insects still to be discovered. So get looking!
I'd like one named after me.

JonSadler · #15 (**permalink**) 15-01-2008, 06:02 PM

Hello

An American scientist (Terry Erwin) has estimated there are around 30 million species of insects on earth. His estimate was based on field work in tropical trees in panama and is a guess but it shows how diverse they are. As to the catalogued species there are only about 1 million or so - so there is a lot of work for budding entomologists.

And recent estimates suggest for every human there are 200 million insects (individual bugs, bees etc not species). The most abundant and speciose order of insects are Coleoptera (beetles), so much so that when someone asked the famous British ecologist Haldane what could be concluded about the Creator from the study of creation, he famously quipped "an inordinate fondness for beetles". Quite right too.

What a fantastic group of organisms....

Regards
Jon

Ukwildlifeo · #16 (**permalink**) 15-01-2008, 06:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Susie

Hehe, please forgive my ignorance. At times I even forget myself to the point where I call spiders insects.

To be fair some entomologists still consider springtails insects so, techniqually you could say your not wrong....

Paul mabbott · #17 (**permalink**) 15-01-2008, 07:13 PM

Well I'm not an economist (as you would know if you could read my bank statement) but I am a scientist and would not use the term "billion" at all. As I'm sure you're aware, scientific notation doesn't come in words and, to avoid all the zeros, uses the superscript notation which I can't show here

.. and if I did use it I'd have to explain it all

Quote:

Originally Posted by pressld2

The traditional English (and possibly European) definition of a billion is a million million - that's 1,000,000,000,000. However, these days the American definition of one thousand million (1,000,000,000) is pretty much universally accepted. It's certainly what economists and scientists would mean when they use the word.

Dave P.

pressld2 · #18 (**permalink**) 15-01-2008, 07:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paul mabbott

Well I'm not an economist (as you would know if you could read my bank statement) but I am a scientist and would not use the term "billion" at all. As I'm sure you're aware, scientific notation doesn't come in words and, to avoid all the zeros, uses the superscript notation which I can't show here

.. and if I did use it I'd have to explain it all

You're quite right Paul. Scientists, in scientific papers, would use the powers of 10 notation which I don't think we can use in forum posts. An English billion is 10 to the twelfth and an American billion is 10 to the ninth. When writing for the lay reader, however, they regularly do use the word billion just to keep things more simple for us. Carl Sagan even published a book called Billions and Billions!

Dave P.

Paul mabbott · #19 (**permalink**) 15-01-2008, 08:10 PM

Damn, why did I never think of that

Absolutely true of course ....

Quote:

Originally Posted by tachybaptus

according to our resident entomologist at work 9 out of every 10 organisms is an insect - its his justification for every pay rise request as he says he has to work harder on his surveys than we do!
Paul

JeffH · #20 (**permalink**) 15-01-2008, 08:24 PM

I don't think this helps at all but I found it on the web (so it must be true

) and here it is -

Million: 1,000,000
Billion: 1,000,000,000
Trillion: 1,000,000,000,000
Quintillion: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000
Sextillion: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
Nonillion: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
Centillion: 1 followed by 303 zeros

All this talk of these almost meaningless numbers reminds me of a true story - some years ago the Nicaraguan Finance Minister was being interviewed by a foreign journalist about his country's raging inflation and the level of its foreign debt.

The journalist quantified the debt in US$ quoting some ridiculous figure like $752 trillion and asked the Minister how much that was in his country's own currency - the 'Gold Cordoba'.

After a short pause, his reply was - "all of them"

Jeff

Paul mabbott · #21 (**permalink**) 15-01-2008, 08:32 PM

Nice joke - that's what I would say if I were a Finance Minister.
But there is no logic to those names (billion should surely be two millions, trillion should be three millions and so forth.
This seems to be based, sort of?, on the scientific system but with no clarity .. or logic ...

Why are people not taught 'powers of ten' at an early age ... it's a simple enough system ... perhaps not simple enough for the teachers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JeffH

I don't think this helps at all but I found it on the web (so it must be true

) and here it is -

Million: 1,000,000
Billion: 1,000,000,000
Trillion: 1,000,000,000,000
Quintillion: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000
Sextillion: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
Nonillion: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
Centillion: 1 followed by 303 zeros

All this talk of these almost meaningless numbers reminds me of a true story - some years ago the Nicaraguan Finance Minister was being interviewed by a foreign journalist about his country's raging inflation and the level of its foreign debt.

The journalist quantified the debt in US$ quoting some ridiculous figure like $752 trillion and asked the Minister how much that was in his country's own currency - the 'Gold Cordoba'.

After a short pause, his reply was - "all of them"

Jeff