"Very few places remain on Earth that are not seething with species of plants, animals, or microorganisms. At this time, for all intents and purposes the biological diversity seems almost infinite, and each living species in turn offers scientists boundless opportunities for important original research.
Consider a rotting tree stump in a forest. You and I casually walking past it on ...more ↓
"Very few places remain on Earth that are not seething with species of plants, animals, or microorganisms. At this time, for all intents and purposes the biological diversity seems almost infinite, and each living species in turn offers scientists boundless opportunities for important original research.
Consider a rotting tree stump in a forest. You and I casually walking past it on a trail would not give it more than a passing glance. But wait a moment. Walk around the stump slowly, look at it closely--as a fellow scientist. Before you, in miniature, is the equivalent of an unexplored planet... So...let's ask: What life exists in the stump microplanet?"
"Start with animals. There may be cavities in the side, or at the base or beneath the roots, large enough to hold a mouse-sized mammal, and if not, surely a frog, salamander, snake, or lizard. Let us next magnify the image to bring in insects and other invertebrates one millimeter to thirty millimeters in length. We can see most of them with unaided vision. They are each distributed according to niches for which millions of years of evolution have adapted them. A large minority are insects. An entomologist trained in taxonomy...will point out beetles that live here...If the stump is well along in decomposition, ant colonies will be there, resting in the frass beneath the bark among the roots below. Termites may riddle the heartwood. In the crevice and over the surface can be found bark lice, springtails, proturans, fly and moth larvae, earwigs, japygids, and symphylans. Around them a myriad of other rotting-stump invertebrates other than insects: crustacean pill bugs, tiny annelid worms, centipedes of varying sizes and shapes, slugs, snails, pauropods, and a huge fauna of mites...Spiders of many kinds spin webs or hunt widely on foot."
"In patches of moss and lichens that grow on the surface of the stump--little worlds of their own--roam the aforementioned tardigrades...Among these animals are the most abundant of all: the nematodes, also called roundworms, most barely visible. Worldwide, roundworms are reckoned to make up for-fifths of all the individual animals..."
"Throughout the decaying wood, fungal strands penetrate...microscopic fungi abound wherever there is moisture. Ciliates and other protistans swim in films and droplets of water. All of the life of the stump ecosystem is dwarfed, however, in both variety and numbers of organisms, by the bacteria."
--Letters to a Young Scientist, Dr. E.O. Wilson, Chapter 10
Photo from: http://treeservicewakeforest.com/raleigh-stump-grinding-removal/raleigh-tree-stumps-decompose-decay/
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