Life comes in all shapes in sizes, but some sizes are more popular than others, new research from the University of British Columbia (UBC) has found. In the first study of its kind published today (March 29) in PLOS ONE, Dr. Eden Tekwa, who conducted the study as a postdoctoral fellow at UBC’s d
New research from the University of British Columbia has revealed that Earth’s biomass is predominantly concentrated in organisms at either end of the size spectrum. In the first study of its kind, Dr. Eden Tekwa surveyed the body sizes of all living organisms on Earth and discovered that the smallest and largest organisms significantly outweigh all others. This unexpected pattern challenges current theories, which predict that biomass would be spread evenly across all body sizes.
In addition to challenging our understanding of how life is distributed, these results have important implications for predicting the effects and impacts of climate change. “Body size governs a lot of global processes as well as local processes, including the rate at which carbon gets sequestered, and how the function and stability of ecosystems might be affected by the composition of living things,” said Dr. Tekwa.
To obtain their results, Dr. Tekwa spent five years compiling and analyzing data about the size and biomass of every type of living organism on the planet—from tiny one-celled organisms like soil archaea and bacteria to large organisms like blue whales and sequoia trees. They found that the pattern favouring large and small organisms held across all types of, and was more pronounced in land-based organisms than in marine environments.
Dr. Tekwa was also able to uncover some intriguing details about the distribution of life in various ecosystems. “Even though corals occur in only a small fraction of the ocean, it turns out that they have about the same biomass as all the fish in the ocean,” said Dr. Tekwa. “This illustrates how important the balance of biomass is in the oceans. Corals support a lot of fish diversity, so it’s really interesting that those two organisms have almost the same biomass.
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