M is for Micro-organism

Science’s last frontier lies beneath our feet (brief excerpt)

by Tim Radford, Guardian Weekly 26 Dec-1 Jan 2003 issue

Scientists have launched a systematic study of the last great unexplored territory of the globe: the few centimetres of soil beneath our feet. With a $26m grant, researchers in seven countries have begun a five-year discovery of the tiny, unknown plants and animals that make the rest of the world work.

Tiny creatures – microbes, worms, fungi, beetles, and mites – turn the soil, break down dead wood and leaves, fix nitrogen from the air, produce fresh nutrients for crops, manage the water cycle, release carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases and underpin all life above ground.

Forests, savannahs, and farmland are all supported by a huge and largely unknown suite of creatures living in the first metre of soil below the surface. They have yielded some of the world’s most important antibiotics, and have saved farmers billions of dollars in fertilisers and pesticides. They could launch a new agricultural revolution and yield untold riches for the industries of the future, yet they are the least studied organisms on the planet.

“When people think of where new species might be found, they tend to think of rainforests, mangrove swamps, or places like mountain peaks – not millimetres below their toes,” says Klaus Toepfer, the director of the UN environment programme.

Notes from Tales From The Underground by David Wolfe:

• 70,000 organisms with chewing mouth parts in a cubic foot of soil
• 40-70 species, each one feeding on another

grassland soil:

one tsp contains

• 5 billion bacteria
• 20 million fungi
• 1 million protists

one cubic meter contains

• 1000 @ of ants, spiders, woodlice, beetles and their larvae, fly larvae
• 2000 @ of earthworms, millipedes, centipedes
• 8000 slugs and snails
• 20,000 potworms
• 40,000 springtails
• 120,000 mites
• 12 million nematodes

rainforest:

• soil bacteria not as diverse as desert or Kansas
• too acidic in tropics
• diversity is greater under winter snowpack in the Rockies