What about Bristlemouths? [0] Estimated to be in the TRILLIONS, inhabiting 70% of the earth's surface. Even if they are small, I think they have Spruce and "Larches" pretty handily beat by biomass. Cyclothone upper estimates are quadrillions of fish[1].

[0]https://a-z-animals.com/articles/the-10-animals-with-the-hig...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonostomatidae

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happyopossum 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Bristlemouths are a family, made up of 32 distinct species. The question is dominant species...

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faldor20 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

He is actually still probably right.

If we say the fish is 2cm wide and 7.5cm long (average length according to wiki) That's 23cm^3 Assume the fish is neutrally bouyant so it's 1g/cm^3(I know deep sea pressures change density, but let's just go with this)

1 quadrillion*23g= 23 trillion kg

So like... 1/32 of that is still around 100x bigger than the trees.

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cmpb 4 hours ago | parent [-]

That seems dubious, trophically. Whatever the prolific bristlemouth species eats would then likely be the greater biomass species

	▲	rinconrex 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Copepods and a variety of other things like molluscs and small fish, not necessarily just one species. Of course, as you point out, the fish must have more food biomass than themselves, but it is not as concentrated (high density of one genus) in the lower trophic levels.

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rinconrex 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Fine, you want a species? Cyclothone alba, circumglobal, possibly in the high trillions [0].

[0] https://researcharchive.calacademy.org/research/ichthyology/...