A single teaspoon of soil from a healthy forest floor contains more living organisms — bacteria, fungi, protists, nematodes — than there are humans on Earth, and most of the species in that spoonful have never been named or described
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Put a teaspoon into biologically active forest soil and the resulting sample can contain more microorganisms than there are humans on Earth. An Atlantic overview of soil microbiology states the comparison directly. It is best understood as an illustration of scale because abundance varies with soil type, depth, moisture, season and counting method.
The second half of the comparison is just as striking. A global soil survey reported that species-level information could not be assigned to 99 per c
The second half of the comparison is just as striking. A global soil survey reported that species-level information could not be assigned to 99 per c
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