How many insects?????

[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

[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 ...

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

[pressld2]

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.

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.