Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
....
the thought came to me last night that they
also are spreading their preferred bacterial
species around and innoculating plants above
ground with these. in effect creating a
beneficial micro climate with some of their
bacterial friends.

an interesting side thought as it shows how
one rather small and mostly ignored organism
can have such large effects over a part of
their environment that we might not normally
consider a part of their domain.

Since the worms passageways channel air, and water, why would they
expose themselves to predators, when the plants roots will find their
way to the passageways and the bacteria? I thought the worms bacteria
did its work in the worms intestine. Why would the worm want to spread
it? What's the advantage to the worm?

i really don't know why they crawl upwards
as far as they do. i'm guessing it is a new
territory seeking behavior or a finding new
mating partner behavior (both do vary by
species). it's the byproduct of that behavior
that i find interesting and caused me to write
a note. that it does mean they are spreading
their bacterial gut buddies around the zone
above the one we normally think of them as
inhabiting. i wouldn't be surprised to find
out they are also spreading fungi and other
critters too.

it may be that the behavior is actually
driven in some manner by the bacteria much
as some human behaviors are driven by gut
bacterial colonies (and the dysfunctions
that can happen with them). so there might
not be a direct benefit to the worm as much
as it is acting as an agent for the bacteria
to get it spread around.

we are certainly the agent for some plant
species spreading and of course we take our own
bacterial colonies along with us too as a result.
it might not be a far stretch to say that some
new territory seeking behaviors or the travel bug
drives in people might be the result of a long
association with bacteria. if the home turf
gets too contaminated then there are some who
will move on. thus space travel might be an
urge at heart derived from bacterial nudgings.
that's leverage for ya. starting with methane
and ending up with ... well, we don't quite
know where it ends yet. ha.


songbird