Which species's evolution is most successful?

[Pete]

I know what I'm saying and I know how to count!

We're not talking about mass, we're talking about numbers.

We're not talking about animals, we're talking about all eukaryotes and all their cells and all their mitochondria.

Now you take all eukaryotic organisms, times the average number of cells in each organism, times the average number of mitochondria in each cell. Is that number equal to, less than, or greater than the number of bacteria in the world. I would say greater than, but I could be wrong.

If the number of mitochondria is more than the number of bacteria, would you agree that the mass of mitochondria is more than or not much less than the mass of bacteria?

If this is true, then the mass of eukaryotes must be far more than the mass of bacteria... but this is not the case!

Therefore, there must be far more bacteria than mitochondria.

 

[paulsamuel]

If the number of mitochondria is more than the number of bacteria, would you agree that the mass of mitochondria is more than or not much less than the mass of bacteria?

If this is true, then the mass of eukaryotes must be far more than the mass of bacteria... but this is not the case!

Therefore, there must be far more bacteria than mitochondria.

it depends on the mass of a mitochondrium relative to a bacterium.

one way to estimate it is to estimate the amt. of bacteria in the world. wellcookedfetus came up with an estimate. then compare that with estimates of eukaryotic organisms in the world, multiply that by number of cells then number of mitochondria per cell. i started with an estimate of human mitochondria in the world.

 

[ElectricFetus]

Something does not add up here: how could more then half of the world biomass be prokaryotes of equal size and mass to mitochondria (if not smaller) yet there be less bacteria then mitochondria?
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_bacteria.html

 

[paulsamuel]

Something does not add up here: how could more then half of the world biomass be prokaryotes of equal size and mass to mitochondria (if not smaller) yet there be less bacteria then mitochondria?
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_bacteria.html

that's a good question, so i'm starting to think that some of these estimates are way off. there're probably a lot more prokaryotes than estimated (in terms of number not biomass).