Over its existence, Earth has developed a rich biosphere with a large and still unknown number of species, which occupies more than ... orders of magnitudes from small microbes to whales, and which has adopted to nearly all environments on Earth from ice to submarine volcanoes. Microbes, reptiles, insects, birds, mammals, together form a rich variety of ecosystems that turn Earth's surface into a highly variable mosaic of small but interconnected patches depending on available energy, nutrients and links to other ecosystems.