wormscience
New Member
I'm out and about earthworm surveying over the next fortnight, its a great opportunity to showcase biodiversity. I’ve put heaps of resources online to support community earthworm monitoring activities: www.wormsurvey.org. This thread is a useful place to discuss trends and results
Choose from two downloadable methods (each takes about 60 mins to do):
1) Dig 5 soil pits per field and photograph your worms using the template, uploading your results to the communal results hub (free, need email sign up for data entry) and to browse previous #30minworms results.
2) Is earthworm-based biocontrol a study area of interest to the agricultural community? If you know what L.terrestris middens look like then take part in a small hypothesis-based survey that they are biological hotspots in arable fields. The ultimate aim is the biocontrol of plant pathogens – midden mapping is the first step.
Everybody is likely to find earthworms. From a science-farming partnership perspective, the types of earthworms are interesting. Two of the three types of worms are plant-residue feeding, but can be absent in fields with a history of intense tillage/removing surface residues. This can be problematic to crop production when switching to reduced till and retention of residue systems - instead of decomposition, plant residues persist on the soil surface increasing disease pressure. In fields with residue-feeding worms, middens are formed (not worm casts, middens are deliberately constructed and maintained by L.terrestris worms). The agronomic and ecological significance of these earthworm-generated structures is waiting to be discovered.....
Choose from two downloadable methods (each takes about 60 mins to do):
1) Dig 5 soil pits per field and photograph your worms using the template, uploading your results to the communal results hub (free, need email sign up for data entry) and to browse previous #30minworms results.
2) Is earthworm-based biocontrol a study area of interest to the agricultural community? If you know what L.terrestris middens look like then take part in a small hypothesis-based survey that they are biological hotspots in arable fields. The ultimate aim is the biocontrol of plant pathogens – midden mapping is the first step.
Everybody is likely to find earthworms. From a science-farming partnership perspective, the types of earthworms are interesting. Two of the three types of worms are plant-residue feeding, but can be absent in fields with a history of intense tillage/removing surface residues. This can be problematic to crop production when switching to reduced till and retention of residue systems - instead of decomposition, plant residues persist on the soil surface increasing disease pressure. In fields with residue-feeding worms, middens are formed (not worm casts, middens are deliberately constructed and maintained by L.terrestris worms). The agronomic and ecological significance of these earthworm-generated structures is waiting to be discovered.....