Trends in Ecology and Evolution has Spotlight articles that highlight important new papers. Greenspoon et al. in PNAS offer an ambitious effort to estimate global mammal abundance. This overview adds context. In terms of biomass, white-tailed deer come out on top…

Clark, J.S., 2023. The most abundant mammals on Earth. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, ISSN 0169-5347, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2023.05.001. New estimates of global mammal abundance that use relationships between traits, estimates of range size, and International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN’s) Red List categories to predict the biomass of thousands of species have been developed by Greenspoon et al. This approach and some of the challenges that contribute to these estimates are summarized here.