6: References

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Bar-On Y.M., Phillips R. & Milo R. (2018) The biomass distribution on Earth. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 115:6506-6511 ; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1711842115
Bar-On, Y.M. & Milo R. (2019) The biomass composition of the oceans: A blueprint of our blue planet, Cell, 179 :1451-1454; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2019.11.018

The author is very grateful to Mr. Pascal Combemorel (Planet-Vie) and Prof. Laurence Després for their critical review of this text.

[1] Whitman W.B., Coleman D.C. & Wiebe W.J. (1998) Prokaryotes: The unseen majority. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 95:6578-6583.

[2] Carvalhais N. et al. (2014) Global covariation of carbon turnover times with climate in terrestrial ecosystems. Nature 514:213-217.

[3] Quere C.L. et al. (2005) Ecosystem dynamics based on plankton functional types for global ocean biogeochemistry models. Glob. Change Biol. 11:2016-2040.

[4] Bar-On Y.M., Phillips R. & Milo R. (2018) The biomass distribution on Earth. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 115:6506-6511; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1711842115

[5] Bar-On, Y.M. & Milo R. (2019) The biomass composition of the oceans: A blueprint of our blue planet, Cell, 179 :1451-1454; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2019.11.018

[6] https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm...-and-elements/

[7] Vernadsky V.I. (1998) Photosynthetic living matter. The Biosphere (Copernicus, New York, NY), pp 72-84.

[8] Our knowledge of the biomass composition of different taxa is mainly determined by the ability to sample their biomass in nature, for example in deep ocean and crustal environments. The main gaps in our knowledge concern the distribution of biomass among different microbial taxa, such as bacteria, archaea, protists and fungi.

[9] The data set collected and analyzed by Bar-on et al [4,5] is available on GitHub. The data representation for the figures is done using the Proteomaps tool.

[10] What Bar-On et al. (ref. [4]) define as plants are the set of Embryophytes (which are called land plants), green algae and red algae. For French-speaking authors (Romaric Forêt and his Dictionnaire de sciences de la vie, Le Guyader & Lecointre and their Classification phylogénétique du vivant), the term plants is synonymous with Embryophytes. For Wikipedia, the term plants is synonymous with Archaeoplastids (green lineage).

[11] The uncertainty associated with this estimate of plant biomass is relatively small (≈1.2 times). In contrast, the uncertainty associated with the bacterial biomass estimate is much larger (≈9 times) (see ref. [4]).

[12] Erb K.-H. et al. (2017) Unexpectedly large impact of forest management and grazing on global vegetation biomass. Nature 553:73-76

[13] The arthropods are an animal phylum with an organizational plan characterized by a segmented body covered with chitin. They include animals as varied as myriapods (millipedes), crustaceans (krill, crabs…), arachnids (spiders), insects (grasshoppers, flies, bees…), etc.

[14] Kew Botanical Garden (2017) State of the World’s Plants 2017, online

[15] Chapman A.D. (2009) Numbers of Living Species in Australia and the World (Australian Biological Resources Study, Canberra, Australia).

[16] Atkinson A., Siegel V., Pakhomov E.A., Jessopp M.J. & Loeb V. (2009) A re-appraisal of the total biomass and annual production of Antarctic krill. Deep Sea Res. Part I Oceanogr. Res. Pap. 56:727-740.

[17] Sanderson M.G. (1996) Biomass of termites and their emissions of methane and carbon dioxide: A global database. Global Biogeochem. Cycles 10:543-557.

[18] Nematodes are round, tapered worms with a very simple organization. They are found in all environments: marine, freshwater, in soils, in animals or in the aerial parts of plants. Many species are plant parasites (phytophagous). Many species of free-living soil nematodes promote the decomposition of organic matter.

[19] Schultz T.R. (2000) In search of ant ancestors. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 97:14028-14029.

[20] Wilson E.O. (2003) The encyclopedia of life. Trends Ecol. Evol. 18:77-80.

[21] Whitman W.B., Coleman D.C. & Wiebe W.J. (1998) Prokaryotes: The unseen majority. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 95:6578-6583.

[22] Wake D.B. & Vredenburg V.T. (2008) Colloquium paper: Are we in the midst of the sixth mass extinction? A view from the world of amphibians. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 105:11466-11473.

[23] Field C.B., Behrenfeld M.J., Randerson J.T. & Falkowski P. (1998) Primary production of the biosphere: Integrating terrestrial and oceanic components. Science 281:237-240.

[24] Deep subsoils are defined as the area of sediment in the marine subsurface and oceanic crust, and the terrestrial substrate deeper than 8 m, excluding soil.

[25] Most bacteria and archaea on Earth (1.2 × 10³⁰cells) exist in the “big five” habitats: deep ocean basement (4 × 10²⁹), upper ocean sediments (5 × 10²⁸), deep continental basement (3 × 10²⁹), soil (3 × 10²⁹), and oceans (1 × 10²⁹), of which 40-80% of the total number are present in biofilms (a twofold uncertainty). Flemming, H.-C. & Wuertz, S. Bacteria and archaea on Earth and their abundance in biofilms. Nat. Rev. Microbiol. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-019-0158-9 (2019)

[26] Johnson H.P. & Pruis M.J. (2003) Fluxes of fluid and heat from the oceanic crustal reservoir. Earth Planet Sci. Lett. 216:565-574.

[27] Macroalgae are a diverse group of multicellular algae, which includes green algae (Chlorophyceae) and red algae (Rhodophyceae) belonging to the plant clade (Archaoplastidae), as well as brown algae (Phaeophyceae), which are part of the protist clade. Bar-On et al[5] first estimated the total biomass of benthic macroalgae, i.e. green, red and brown variants. We note that holoplanktonic algae (algae that spend their entire life cycle in open water) are brown algae (which are protists).

[28] Wigington C.H., Sonderegger D., Brussaard C.P.D. et al. (2016) Re-examination of the relationship between marine viruses and microbial cell abundances. Nat. Microbiol. 1: 15024

[29] Zubkov M.V. (2014) Faster growth of the major prokaryotic versus eukaryotic_CO2 fixers in the oligotrophic ocean. Nat. Commun. 5:3776.

[30] Catul V., Gauns M. & Karuppasamy P.K. (2011) A review on mesopelagic fishes belonging to family Myctophidae. Rev. Fish. Biol. Fish. 21:339-354.

[31] Buitenhuis E.T. et al. (2013) MAREDAT: Towards a world atlas of MARine ecosystem DATa. Earth Syst Sci Data 5:227-239.

[32] Kuris A.M. & et al. (2008) Ecosystem energetic implications of parasite and free-living biomass in three estuaries. Nature 454:515-518.

[33] Barnosky A.D. (2008) Colloquium paper: Megafauna biomass tradeoff as a driver of Quaternary and future extinctions. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci . 105:11543-11548.

[34] Christensen L.B. (2006) Marine mammal populations: Reconstructing historical abundances at the global scale. Fisheries Centre Research Reports 14

[35] Crowther T.W. et al. (2015) Mapping tree density at a global scale. Nature 525:201-205.