Soil & Worms
The living few metres at the top. Soil horizons and how long they take to form, the worms Darwin spent forty years on, mycorrhizal networks and the fungi that trade with roots, burrowing animals, the seed bank, and the erosion that removes it all faster than it accumulates.
Part of Underground
52 moments in this segment.
- - Lantern Slide Earthworm -- Larder - John H Crabtree - 118 1934 48. This photographic slide shows a feature in the soil and is entitled ‘Earthworm - larder’. The slide was part of the collection belonging to John Crabtree and is within a set of slides of nature and bi. Period photograph.
- - The Cicada Life Cycle. David Attenborough narrates the cicada's years underground feeding on root sap before a synchronised mass emergence.
- - Earthworms are vital to soil health because they transport nutrients and minerals from bel. This image or file is a work of a United States Department of Agriculture employee, taken or made as part of that person's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in t.
- - Soil Survey. A worm on a sample from the Btg horizon of a Ciales soil in El Yunque National Forest, PR. Macro-organisms, such as this earthworm, can dramatically alter soil structure, water movement, nutrient dyna.
- - Unearthing the Wood-Wide Web. The Open University on where fungi live in soil and how the plant-fungus network was first investigated.
- - Earthworm Invaders. Smithsonian ecologist Melissa McCormick on how most earthworms in US soils are non-native and are reshaping American forests.
- - Soybean field soil structure, black and white. CAPTION: The soil structure in Bill Nelson’s fields in Lake County, S.D., has organic matter (dark, rich color) and live roots extending way down,” says NRCS Conservation Agronomist Eric Barsness, Bro.
- - Soybean Field with Healthy Soil. CAPTION: The soil structure in Bill Nelson’s fields in Lake County, S.D., U.S.A, has organic matter (dark, rich color) and live roots extending way down,” says NRCS Conservation Agronomist Eric Barsne.
- - A Close-Up of the Creatures Living Beneath the Soil. BBC microphotography of the mites, springtails and worms in a handful of soil.
- - What does healthy soil look like? Photos from Davison County, SD photo 1 of 2. Heidi Rients, District Conservationist with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Mitchell, SD serving Davison and Hanson Counties, was on a field visit April 24, 2014. Heidi and Soi.
- - Earthworm in a No-till Field near Brookings, SD. Photo shows an earthworm on the soil surface in a no-till field near Brookings, SD. The soil is in good condition although several heavy rains during June 2014 had saturated the field which the farmer.
- - Earthworm Enjoying Food Supply in Farm Habitat. Sometimes, a great photo is simply being in the right place at the right time! On this early morning in late June 2015, Heidi Rients, District Conservationist with the USDA Natural Resources Conservat.
- - Soil Health. Jason Degenhardt, right, and NRCS soil health specialist Aaron Hird examine a soil sample for structure and for earthworms. Degenhardt is using no-till, cover crops and diverse rotations to improve so.
- - Examining a soil core for earthworms. Diverse species and planned grazing are significantly improving soil health indicated by increased organic matter and earthworms. The improvement in soil health is also adding to the production capaci.
- - How Trees Talk to Each Other. Suzanne Simard's own account of thirty years of research in Canadian forests, the talk that carried the mother-tree idea to a mass audience.
- - Are Naked Mole Rats the Strangest Mammals?. A mammal with the social life of an insect and the cold-bloodedness of a reptile, shaped by permanent life underground.
- - The Earth's Internet: How Fungi Help Plants Communicate. SciShow on the mycorrhizal connections through which plants exchange signals and nutrients over distance.
- - How Naked Mole Rats Survive Without Oxygen. Naked mole rats endure oxygen levels that would kill most mammals, an adaptation to crowded, poorly ventilated burrows.
- - Soil organic carbon cycling. Proposed model for soil organic carbon (SOC) cycling showing root carbon (C) inputs as the primary source of both SOC and dissolved organic C (DOC) in most ecosystems. Root-derived C is shown undergoi.
- - A beetle and an earthworm in soil. A beetle and an earthworm photographed in soil by the USDA; both are macro-organisms whose burrowing and feeding aerate the ground and cycle nutrients.
- - Roots Compete for Prime Real Estate Underground. Modelling and greenhouse work showing how neighbouring plants' root systems interact and partition soil.
- - Why Soil Is One of the Most Amazing Things on Earth. Made with the Royal Society, an account of what soil actually is and the density of living things it holds.
- - Naked Mole-Rat Colonies Have Their Own Dialects. Science magazine on colony-specific vocal dialects in the underground colonies of up to 300 mostly blind and deaf rodents.
- - Brood X: What to Expect After 17 Years Underground. PBS NewsHour ahead of the 2021 periodical cicada emergence, including concern that warming is pushing broods to mature off-schedule.
- - Brood X Cicadas Emerge After 17 Years. New Scientist films trillions of cicadas surfacing across 15 US states, with entomologist Gene Kritsky's citizen-science tracking.
- - Why Brood X May Emerge More Often in Future. Science magazine on stragglers appearing off-cycle and what that suggests about the 17-year clock.
- - The Naked Mole-Rat: Animal Superhero. Chris Faulkes of Queen Mary, University of London on the physiology and evolutionary ecology of this long-lived subterranean rodent.
- - The Hidden Wonders of Soil. Climate scientist Jane Zelikova on soil's microbial diversity and its role as one of the planet's largest carbon stores.
- - How Microbes Make Soil Healthy. DW on the microbial life that soil depends on, and on efforts to revive degraded soils by restoring it.
- - Earthworm Love Is Cuddly and Complicated. Deep Look's macro footage of earthworm mating and cocoon-making inside tubes of slime in the soil.
- - Tracking Prairie Dogs Underground for the First Time. Smithsonian researchers follow prairie dogs into the burrows where they spend about 70 percent of their lives.
- - Mycorrhizal Fungi: The Roots of Life on Land. Narrated by Merlin Sheldrake, an animated account of how the plant-fungus partnership evolved and made land plants possible.
- - Inside a Termite Fortress. BBC Earth on the underground architecture of a termite mound and how its engineering survives flooding.
- - Mapping Mycorrhizal Fungi in a War Zone. Ukrainian researchers led by Oleh Prylutskyi sample soil fungi for metabarcoding under wartime conditions as part of a global mapping effort.
- - Why 2024's Cicada Emergence Was So Rare. BBC on the 2024 dual emergence, when a 13-year and a 17-year periodical cicada brood surfaced in the same season.
- - How the Wood Wide Web Helps Trees Communicate. DW's On the Green Fence examines the underground fungal network connecting trees and how much of the popular claim holds up.
- - What Is Soil and Why Does It Matter?. A Natural History Museum soil scientist explains what soil is made of and the life it holds.
- - Mapping and Protecting the World's Mycorrhizal Fungi. Bethan Manley of SPUN on using machine learning and global sampling to locate underground fungal diversity hotspots.
- - Earthworm Ecology with Nick Henshue. A soil ecologist on what earthworms actually do to soil structure, and why the answer differs between a garden and a forest.
- - Darwin's Unexpected Final Obsession. PBS Eons on the earthworm, the subject of Darwin's last book in 1881, and his argument that worms remake the soil of the whole land surface.
- - An Earthworm in its Natural Habitat at Kyabobo National Park. An earthworm moving across a damp, rich soil in the forest.
- - Underground Connections: How Mycorrhizal Fungi Shape Ecosystems. A University of Sheffield researcher on the nutrient trade between plants and mycorrhizal fungi, and on what that partnership does and does not do.
- - The Four Most Ruthless Ants We've Ever Filmed. Deep Look's macro footage of fire ants, kidnapper ants, honeypot ants and Argentine ants, and the underground colonies they run.
- - The Hidden World of Plant Roots. Stanford biologist Jose Dinneny on roots as active explorers of the soil rather than passive anchors.
- - The 262 New Species Named in 2025. Natural History Museum scientists on the year's newly described species, including worms, fungi and invertebrates from soil and cave habitats.
- - Prairie Dogs as Ecosystem Engineers. The Smithsonian on black-tailed prairie dogs as a keystone species whose burrowing creates habitat for dozens of other grassland animals.
- - The Wood Wide Web, Thirty Years Later. Christian Schwartz revisits the wood wide web three decades on, weighing what the evidence actually supports against how the idea has been popularised.
- - Belowground Biodiversity in Northeast India. A SPUN Underground Explorer samples soil fungi across rainforest, alpine meadow and cold desert to see how much diversity is hidden below.
- - Suzanne Simard Said Trees Talk. The Evidence Is Complicated.. Traces Simard's 1997 Nature paper on carbon transfer between trees, the 'wood wide web' framing the editors gave it, and the scientific pushback that followed.
- - Mapping 110 Quadrillion Kilometres of Fungal Threads. SPUN and AMOLF researchers publish in Science the first global estimate of the total length of mycorrhizal mycelium in soil.
- - The Molecule Behind the Naked Mole-Rat's Bee-Like Society. Nature reports research identifying a molecular basis for the eusocial structure of naked mole-rat colonies, where one queen breeds and the rest do not.
- - Do Fungi Help Invasive Willows Spread in Patagonia?. Field research on whether soil fungi mediate the replacement of Patagonia's native willows by non-native ones.