Of key interest, facing our current global challenges around climate change, should also be the capacity of healthy soils to sequester and store gigatonnes of carbon long-term. These conditions affect nutrient availability for plants, habitat availability and activities of other organisms present in the soil system, aeration, water infiltration and drainage ability of the soil body, and more. Overall, earthworms cause diverse physical, chemical and biological changes to the soil profile. From a positive perspective, their burrowing activity improves granularity and soil structure, for example.įurther, earthworms recycle dead organic material to compost by pulling organic material deeper into the soil through their tunnels or by ingesting and digesting it to form humus. They ingest soil particles in order to absorb nutrients from degraded organic material.Īnecic earthworms dig deep within the soil during the day where they form permanent, vertical tunnels but surface during the night to feed and deposit their casts.Įarthworm presence, or absence, in soils influences several soil properties which determine the overall status of soil health. They are further classified into three groups according to their behaviour and habitat, namely epigeic, endogeic and anecic.Įpigeic earthworms live on or very close to the soil surface where they feed on rotting plant and animal material and do not dig tunnels.Įndogeic earthworms live in the top 10 cm to 30 cm of the soil body where they form horizontal tunnels.

They are found in varying depths of the soil body, generally feeding on living and dead organic material. The giant African earthworm ( Microchaetus rappi), for example, reaches average lengths of 1.4 meter (4.5 feet).Įarthworms belong to the phylum Annelida and are cylindrical, segmented worms.

They can vary in size from about 10 mm to 3 meter.

It is said that the mass of all earthworms living on our planet is greater than the mass of any other terrestrial animal species. Let’s dig a bit deeper to understand why.ĭid you know that there are about 7,000 different species of earthworm living beneath our feet? Only around 150 of these earthworm species, however, are widely distributed around the world. Earthworms, similar to bees or ants, play key engineering roles in natural systems and thus directly affect our lives.

Download african giant earthworm