Researchers estimate there are 2.5m ants for every human across the planet

In the next few months, the world's human population is expected to surpass 8 billion. That is a mediocre achievement compared to ants.

The estimate of the global population of ants is 20 quadrillions, or 2.5 million for every human.

It should come as no surprise that these busy and social insects have thrived since the age of dinosaurs, with the oldest known ant fossil dating back 100m years.

The University of Wrzburg in Germany and the University of Hong Kong co-authored a study on ants and their role in the environment.

They are important for a lot of things. The different ants have a wide range of functions. It's their high abundance that makes them important ecological players.

There are more than 12,000 known species of ants, which are either black, brown or red in color and have bodies that are divided into three parts. Depending on the size, ants can be found in soil, leaf litter or decaying plants.

The ants, whose closest relatives are bees and wasp, are native to almost all of the planet.

I was amazed that the ants had 20% of the human population and that it was higher than wild mammals and birds. The University of Wrzburg and University of Hong Kong are both involved in the study.

The diversity of ants is interesting to me. According to Nooten, they can be tiny or huge and show the most bizarre adaptation.

The researchers studied ant populations in over 500 studies across the globe.

Thousands of scientists were involved in the collection of our data. We were able to estimate the number of ants in different parts of the world.

More ants were found in tropical regions than in urban areas.

We can't reach reliable estimates for all continents because we don't have enough data. Africa is a good example. We've known for a long time that it's a very ant-rich region.

Colonies of ants are usually divided into groups with different roles such as workers, soldiers, and queens. The bigger queen and her offspring are cared for by the workers. The males mate with the queens and die.

Some ants can be very annoying, but that is a human centred perspective.

The ants are beneficial to us humans. Think about the amount of organic matter that 20 quadrillion ants transport. Ant are so important for the smooth functioning of biological processes that they can be seen asecosystem engineers. E.O. Wilson used to call them the little things that run the world.