Is this a relatively new development?
The article makes it seem like this hasn’t been studied in depth before (maybe just in the UK?). Sound like they were just trying to get baselines, and the next step would be to understand the whys.
Major survey finds worms are rare or absent in 20% of fields in England
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Re: Major survey finds worms are rare or absent in 20% of fields in England
#12Probably a result of tiling the soil. Disturbing the natural ecosystem of it. And pesticides too presumably.
Something like permaculture could help. Chop and drop. Mulching on the spot.
Re: Major survey finds worms are rare or absent in 20% of fields in England
#13Back when I was a kid, after a heavy downpour the roads would be crowded with earthworms. You really had to watch where you step to avoid stepping on one of those suckers. Fast forward today and I RARELY see a single worm out on the road after a similar downpour.
Re: Major survey finds worms are rare or absent in 20% of fields in England
#14In the US, invasive worms are converting forests from fungal decomposition regimes to bacterial decomposition regimes.
Not a great development for mushroom foragers.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/invasive-earthwor...
Fun stuff.
Re: Major survey finds worms are rare or absent in 20% of fields in England
#15I wonder what volume ‘a spadeful’ is? Presumably not a garden spade?
Edit: 20x20x20 cm volume. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
Re: Major survey finds worms are rare or absent in 20% of fields in England
#16Re: Major survey finds worms are rare or absent in 20% of fields in England
#17> has shown they are rare or absent in two out of five fields The title presumably should say 40%
It seems so. Source: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
Re: Major survey finds worms are rare or absent in 20% of fields in England
#18Back when I was a kid, after a heavy downpour the roads would be crowded with earthworms. You really had to watch where you step to avoid stepping on one of those suckers. Fast forward today and I RARELY see a single worm out on the road after a similar downpour.
When were you a kid?
Re: Major survey finds worms are rare or absent in 20% of fields in England
#19In the US, invasive worms are converting forests from fungal decomposition regimes to bacterial decomposition regimes. Not a great development for mushroom foragers. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/invasive-earthwor... Fun stuff.
> Not all foreign earthworms are destructive. Of the 5,000 species around the globe, only about 16 of the European and Asian varieties do the real damage. One of them is the night crawler (Lumbricus terrestris), a popular fish bait that can measure up to 15 to 20 centimeters (six to eight inches). Another is the Alabama jumper (Amynthas agrestis)—also known as the snake worm or crazy worm—an aggressive Asian worm that lives at high densities and can literally jump off the ground or out of a bait can, according to fishing lore.
So maybe we should use some of the remaining 4984 species of worms as fish bait?
Re: Major survey finds worms are rare or absent in 20% of fields in England
#20In the US, invasive worms are converting forests from fungal decomposition regimes to bacterial decomposition regimes. Not a great development for mushroom foragers. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/invasive-earthwor... Fun stuff.
The last glacial maximum in the US pushed all of the earthworms out of the north central US and Canada, and if memory serves the 'Northern Hardwood Forests' exist in a subset of that area?
Earthworms of pretty much any kind are invasive there, and it's not just a soil microbiome problem, it also affects seed germination. Some of those tree species are adapted to germinate in a bed of leaf litter.
It's a challenge. People post things online that are appropriate to their region and beginners elsewhere don't get why they might not work locally (like that some plants are useful in zone 8 but invasive in zone 5, or vice versa).