[Animals] Abundant Animals: The Most Numerous Orga[Animals] nisms in the World

[TheWild ™]

 

Success consists of going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm. So goes the aphorism attributed (probably wrongly) to Winston Churchill. Whatever the provenance of the quote, these organisms have taken the message to heart. They’ve surmounted disease, starvation, predation, and human intervention to become the most populous species of their respective taxonomic categories, evincing an unwavering enthusiasm for reproduction and a terrifying degree of fecundity. Of course, it is impossible to obtain exact po[CENSORED]tion counts for many creatures, especially those with secretive or nocturnal lifestyles or those that are almost ubiquituous. So, some of these are merely inferences based on the breadth of a particular species’ range or on other extrapolations from the best available information. I’ve ignored invasive species, and, especially, domesticated species, some of which number well into the billions.It hardly comes as a surprise that ants are the most numerous insect in the world. These colonial hymenopterans may number from 10-100,000 trillion individuals globally; there are more than 10,000 species. The springtails, or Collembola, used to hold the title, but they are no longer officially insects, but rather part of a larger subphylum that includes insects and several related creatures. Though a few species are considered pests, ants are hugely benefical in most environments, spreading seeds and disposing of detritus as they forage for food.

https://www.britannica.com/list/abundant-animals-the-most-numerous-organisms-in-the-world