Largest organisms - Wikipedia

Although it appears to be multiple trees, Pando is a clonal colony of an individual quaking aspen with an interconnected root system. It is widely held to be the world's most massive single organism.
This article lists the largest organisms for various types of life and mostly considers extant species,[a] which found on Earth can be determined according to various aspects of an organism's size, such as: mass, volume, area, length, height, or even genome size. Some organisms group together to form a superorganism (such as ants or bees), but such are not classed as single large organisms. The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest structure composed of living entities, stretching 2,000 km (1,200 mi), but contains many organisms of many types of species.
If considered individual entities, the largest organisms are clonal colonies which can spread over large areas. Pando, a clonal colony of the quaking aspen tree, is widely considered to be the largest such organism by mass.[1] Even if such colonies are excluded, trees retain their dominance of this listing, with the giant sequoia being the most massive tree.[2] In 2006 a huge clonal colony of the seagrassPosidonia oceanica was discovered south of the island of Ibiza. At 8 kilometres (5 mi) across, and estimated at around 100,000 years old,[3] it may be one of the largest and oldest clonal colonies on Earth.[4][5][6]
The largest single-stem tree by wood volume and mass is the giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum), native to Sierra Nevada and California; it typically grows to a height of 70–85 m (230–280 ft) and 5–7 m (16–23 ft) in diameter.
The largest organism in the world, according to mass, is the aspen tree whose colonies of clones can grow up to 8 kilometres (5 mi) long. The largest such colony is Pando, in the Fishlake National Forest in Utah.
A form of flowering plant that far exceeds Pando as the largest organism on Earth in area and probably also mass, is the giant marine plant, Posidonia australis, living in Shark Bay, Australia. Its length is about 180 km (112 mi) and it covers an area of 200 km2 (77 sq mi).[7][8] It is among the oldest known clonal plants too.
Another giant marine plant of the genus Posidonia, Posidonia oceanica discovered in the Mediterranean near the Balearic Islands, Spain may be the oldest living organism in the world, with an estimated age of 100,000 years.[9]
Green algae are photosynthetic unicellular and multicellular protists that are related to land plants. The thallus of the unicellular mermaid's wineglass, Acetabularia, can grow to several inches (perhaps 0.1 to 0.2 m) in length. The fronds of the similarly unicellular, and invasive Caulerpa taxifolia can grow up to a foot (0.3 m) long.[citation needed]
In 2023, paleontologists estimated that the extinct whale Perucetus, discovered in Peru, may have outweighed the blue whale, with a mass of 85-340 t (84-335 long tons; 94-375 short tonnes.)[16] While controversial, estimates for the weight of the sauropodBruhathkayosaurus suggest it was around 110-170 tons, with the highest estimate being 240 tons, if scaled with Patagotitan.[17] The upper estimates of weight for these two prehistoric animals would have easily rivaled or exceeded the blue whale.
The African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana) is the largest living land animal. A native of various open habitats in sub-Saharan Africa, males weigh about 6.0 tonnes (13,200 lb) on average.[18] The largest elephant ever recorded was shot in Angola in 1974. It was a male measuring 10.67 metres (35.0 ft) from trunk to tail and 4.17 metres (13.7 ft) lying on its side in a projected line from the highest point of the shoulder, to the base of the forefoot, indicating a standing shoulder height of 3.96 metres (13.0 ft). This male had a computed weight of 10.4 tonnes.[10]
A spatial genetic analysis estimated that a specimen of Armillaria ostoyae growing over 91 acres (37 ha) in northern Michigan, United States weighs 440 tons (4 x 105 kg).[23][24] Approximations of the land area of the Oregon "humongous fungus" are 3.5 square miles (9.1 km2) (2,240 acres (910 ha), possibly weighing as much as 35,000 tons as the world's most massive living organism.[25]
In Armillaria ostoyae, each individual mushroom (the fruiting body, similar to a flower on a plant) has only a 5 cm (2.0 in) stipe, and a pileus up to 12.5 cm (4.9 in) across. There are many other fungi which produce a larger individual size mushroom. The largest known fruiting body of a fungus is a specimen of Phellinus ellipsoideus (formerly Fomitiporia ellipsoidea) found on Hainan Island.[26] The fruiting body masses up to 500 kg (1,100 lb).[27][28]
Until P. ellipsoideus replaced it, the largest individual fruit body came from Rigidoporus ulmarius. R. ulmarius can grow up to 284 kg (626 lb), 1.66 m (5.4 ft) tall, 1.46 m (4.8 ft) across, and has a circumference of up to 4.9 m (16 ft).
The largest known species of bacterium is named Thiomargarita magnifica, which grows to 1 cm (0.39 in) in length,[37] making it visible to the naked eye and also about five thousand times the size of more typical bacteria.[38]BBC News described it as possessing the "size and shape of a human eyelash."[39]Science published a new paper on the bacterium on June 23, 2022.[40] According to a study coauthored by Jean-Marie Volland, a marine biologist and scientist at California's Laboratory for Research in Complex Systems, and an affiliate at the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, T. magnifica can grow up to 2 centimeters long.[41]
The largest virus on record is the Pithovirus sibericum with the length of 1.5 micrometres, comparable to the typical size of a bacterium and large enough to be seen in light microscopes. It was discovered in March 2014 in an ice core sample collected from a permafrost in Siberia. Prior to this discovery, the largest virus was the peculiar virus genus Pandoravirus, which have a size of approximately 1 micrometer and whose genome contains 1,900,000 to 2,500,000 base pairs of DNA.[43]