How many ants are there in the world? Around 2.5 million for every person, study says

A new study has estimated that the number of ants roaming and burrowing around the world could exceed a massive 20 quadrillion individuals.

The number, which is equal to 20,000 trillion, is also thought to be an underestimation of the total population of ants - which are an essential part of ecosystems around the world.

In a paper released by the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, a group of scientists analysed nearly 500 studies in a bid to work out just how many ants there are in the world.

The data will help measure the consequences of changes to their habitat, including those caused by climate change.

In the end, experts from Hong Kong university managed to estimate that there are around 2.5 million ants for every person on earth.

The hundreds of studies that the group ended up analysing, made use of two standardised techniques for counting ants. They either set traps that captured ants passing during a certain period of time, or analysed the number of ants on a given patch of leaves on the ground.

Studies were conducted across the world, however some major regions yielded little to no data, including Africa and Asia.

Due to the lack of data in some parts of the world, the study suggested "the true abundance of ants globally is likely to be considerably higher".

Nearly two-thirds of them are found in only two types of ecosystems: tropical forests and savannahs.

Based on the estimated number of ants, their total global biomass is thought to be 12 megatons of dry carbon - more than that of wild birds and mammals combined, and 20% of that of humans.

In the future, researchers plan to study the environmental factors influencing population density of the tiny creatures.