Year: 2022

GUT SYMBIONTS. "The earthworm plays host to a number of discrete bacterial communities acquired either horizontally from the surrounding soil, as with the gut fauna, or through vertical parental transmission in the cocoon, as observed for the nephridial symbiotes." https://lnkd.in/eCmCiWT View in LinkedIn

GUT HOST. "The earthworm gut microfauna exists within a discrete environment with significant changes in pH, moisture, oxygen and nutrient availability to the soil, and plays host to community profiles distinct from the soil in which they reside." https://lnkd.in/eCmCiWT View in LinkedIn

"THE EARTHWORM GUT has stable conditions different from surrounding environment: permanent anoxia, the pool of free amino acids, organic acids, alcohols, sugars and of hydrogen, the products of organic oligo- and polymer degradation. The gut mucosa could be used as an environment and nutrition by microorganisms, and gut-derived enzymes of earthworms could affect the microbes on the soil particles." https://lnkd.in/ekT4s-F View in LinkedIn

MICROBIAL IMPACT OF EARTHWORMS. "The earthworm impact on transient microbial communities and the surrounding soil microbiome is profound. A core bacterial community has been described which is distinct from the surrounding soil. A number of novel species have been associated with the earthworm crop, body wall and hindgut, contravening claims that the earthworm has limited or no impact on ingested soil bacteria." https://lnkd.in/eEdXpVE View in LinkedIn

EARTHWORM PRIMING CARBON. "Levels of organic carbon are higher in the gut than the surrounding soil due to the secretion of intestinal mucus producing a ‘priming’ effect. This can stimulate significantly an increase in the abundance of methanogenic, fermentative, and nitrate-reducing bacteria." https://lnkd.in/eVE-4GB View in LinkedIn

COMPREHENSIVE EARTHWORM MICROBIOME. "The augmentation with some groups of bacteria, which occurred upon transit through the gut...The ratio of microbes capable of growth under obligatory anaerobic conditions to those capable of growth aerobically was higher in the worm intestine than in the soil...bacterial communities of studied substrata (soil and compost) were significantly modified passing through the gut of earthworms." https://lnkd.in/ekT4s-F View in LinkedIn

EARTHWORM MICROBIOME. "We have described how the earthworm microbiome is distinct from the surrounding soil microbial community. Notably, the L. rubellus microbiome is dominated by Proteobacteria (~50%) and Actinobacteria (~30%). Bacteroidetes (~6%), Acidobacteria (~3%), Firmicutes, Chloroflexi and Cyanobacteria also appear regularly at lower abundance levels." https://lnkd.in/eVE-4GB View in LinkedIn

SOIL METAGENOME. "Together with the direct estimate of a combined metagenome sizes at about 100 billion base pairs, these data support large soil metagenome sizes with a low content of eukaryotic species (

RICH SOIL GENE POOL. "This indicates that the metagenomes from the two micro-ecosystem samples sequenced here are more than 30-fold larger than the human genome, and more than 20 000-fold that of an average bacterial genome. Given one gene per kb, our data indicate that there are about 100 million genes in the soil metagenome." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jam.12035/full View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS two weekends on the beautiful earthworm. This prolific creature plays a critical role in the generation of healthy complex soils. They were generally felt insignificant for agriculture a few decades ago, but research has supported a view of their critical role in healthy soils. Our modern farming methods, including deep tilling and the heavy use of chemicals is killing these critical creatures. Like many adverse effects, these are reversible. https://lnkd.in/eAqFNYN View in LinkedIn