Bacteria and the count of life on Earth

The share of bacteria among “all living organisms” cannot reliably be reduced to 70% without defining what is counted: cells, individuals, or biomass are different questions, and Earth has no complete census of all cells. One global biomass estimate puts bacteria at about 70 gigatonnes of carbon, or roughly 15% of living biomass; plants account for about 80%. Bacteria are extraordinarily numerous by cell count, but their exact share is uncertain. [1–3]