PERCENTAGE biomass in NO WAY reflects “the richness of the mammal kingdom”. It is a synthetic metric that scientists can futz around with enough to produce some

PERCENTAGE biomass in NO WAY reflects “the richness of the mammal kingdom”. It is a synthetic metric that scientists can futz around with enough to produce some shocking metric and get funding/press. ABSOLUTE “biomass” is meaningful, simply because mammals have relatively tight weight ranges and you can estimate the individual counts from the biomass- but let’s be real: it is most likely that they start with estimates of number of individuals and multiply that by the average weight to get biomass. So- ditch the biomass and show absolute numbers of individuals over time. That is meaningful.