From an interview with E.O.Wilson, author of Consilience:

“Nematode worms, he says, account for four of every five animals living on Earth – and are so abundant that if the planet’s surface vanished, its “ghostly outline” could still be made out in the biomass of nematodes, almost all of species unknown.”

Fantastic.

» Harvard Magazine: E.O. Wilson: “Of Ants and Earth”
[via Aula]

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UPDATE: The “wormsphere” quote seems to be originally by N.A. Cobb in 1915. It’s a little longer, and if anything, a little more poetic:

“In short, if all the matter in the universe except the nematodes were swept away, our world would still be dimly recognizable, and if, as disembodied spirits, we could then investigate it, we should find its mountains, hills, vales, rivers, lakes, and oceans represented by a film of nematodes. The location of towns would be decipherable, since for every massing of human beings there would be a corresponding massing of certain nematodes. Trees would still stand in ghostly rows representing our streets and highways. The location of the various plants and animals would still be decipherable, and, had we sufficient knowledge, in many cases even their species could be determined by an examination of their erstwhile nematode parasites.”