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I doubt we'll wipe out e.g. ants out as a class.

Ants and such seem to be at the top of the evolutionary ladder, like humans.

I checked an old (1 m high) ant colony near to a corn field at the end of summer: this summer it was dead.

Maybe it died from old age. They live for decades but will die eventually anyways.

There are probably 1m ants living beneath my house. They are one of the species that has adapted extremely well to living with humans.

we are wiping out the proper use of things like "e.g." thanks to comments like yours, and the comments you've read to make you think this is the proper use.

no one gives a damn about literally anything anymore.

"e.g." is an abbreviation for "for example".

So, "I doubt we'll wipe out, for example, ants as a class".

Meaning that the comment wasn't particularly about ants, just used them as an illustrative example.

"e.g." is for lists of examples. not just one.

Not necessarily. As I understand it, it indicates the presence of a list or group, that the subject(s) mentioned after it belong to. The location of e.g. in the sentence is unusual though: usually it will be found at the end.

No, it's just an abbreviation, nothing more.

I'm not a native speaker.

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