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"IN UZBEKISTAN, convoys of lorries bring them vast distances to improve the desert soil. In the Scottish hills, they helped a sheep farmer to increase the size of his flocks by half. And in Wales they are restoring land scarred by open cast mines. The vital ingredient in each case is the earthworm." https://lnkd.in/ez7qDTc View in LinkedIn

GUARDIANS OF THE SOIL. "Earthworms are the single largest contributors to the soil invertebrate biomass in many ecosystems and have long been recognized for the benefits they bring to the environment. Important functions of earthworms include processes such as soil aeration, bioturbation and organic matter fragmentation that are vital for promoting soil structural development and nutrient cycling." https://lnkd.in/eCmCiWT View in LinkedIn

SOIL TURNOVER CONFIRMED. "Darwin estimated rates of topsoil deposition in the range of 0.20–0.56 cm per year, and the mean amount of soil brought upwards by the worms as 17–40 t per ha per year. More recent studies in Britain, France, Switzerland, and Germany have produced similar values for grass-dominated vegetation in a temperate climate." https://lnkd.in/e8jbAfG View in LinkedIn

GAS EMISSIONS. "One aspect of environmental significance of earthworms discovered recently was the extensive N2O production by microorganisms in the earthworm gut. The numbers of fermentative anaerobes and microbes that used nitrate as a terminal electron acceptor were approximately 2 orders of magnitude higher in the earthworm gut than in the soil from which the earthworms originated." https://lnkd.in/ekT4s-F View in LinkedIn

CARBON SEQUESTERING BY WORMS. "If those numbers sound small, once you take into account average earthworm densities in soil you find that earthworm-produced calcite could lock up 564kg of carbon per hectare of soil per year. Put into context, typical soil-based carbon sequestration techniques such as using cover crops, organic composts and manures, and converting degraded soils into forests could sequester 300 to 800 kg of carbon per hectare per year." https://lnkd.in/e34sEk6 View in LinkedIn

TIP OF ICEBERG. "The microbiotic systems in soil are still not well understood, despite their essential role in biogeochemical cycling on earth. Earlier estimates suggest that 1 g of soil contains about 10(3)–10(7) microbial species, and the general belief is that

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE continues from last weekend in the subject of earthworms. Previously, the delightful story of Darwin with his decades long experiments with earthworms was covered. This weekend, we explore modern findings of the enrichment of the soil microbiota due to earthworms. The earthworm gut microbiota has been thoroughly characterized, and matched with that of the surrounding soil. View in LinkedIn

VIRAL GENOME EDITING AS EVOLUTIONARY DRIVERS. "These competences integrate the whole toolbox of natural genetic engineering, replication, transcription, translation, genomic imprinting, genomic creativity, enzymatic inventions and all types of genetic repair patterns." https://lnkd.in/e-pJFM6 View in LinkedIn

PRECISE EDITING. "It is becoming increasingly evident that the driving forces of evolutionary novelty are not randomly derived chance mutations of the genetic text, but a precise genome editing by omnipresent viral agents." An extraordinary statement to wrap your mind around, and contrary to previous thinking. Re-read and re-digest. Time to re-educate ourselves. I will quote this paper extensively. https://lnkd.in/e-pJFM6 View in LinkedIn

AGENT COMMUNICATION. "Natural genome editing from a biocommunicative perspective is competent agent-driven generation and integration of meaningful nucleotide sequences into pre-existing genomic content arrangements and the ability to (re-)combine and (re-)regulate them according to context-dependent (i.e. adaptational) purposes of the host organism." (Guenther Witzany). https://lnkd.in/eHWGiGU View in LinkedIn