SCT: Hidden Service Animals Under Our Feet
The next time you bait a hook,
consider what you are about to do
to a marvelously designed animal
Note: This article was first published in Science & Culture Today.
Hidden Service Animals: Earthworms Are Only the Beginning
by David Coppedge
Science & Culture Today, October 24, 2023
Without earthworms, scientists at Colorado State calculate, we would have 25 percent less food productivity from plants. How much food service do they provide for us? About 140 million metric tons is the estimate.
Earthworms help establish healthy soils by supporting plant growth in multiple ways — building good soil structure, assisting in water capture and aiding in the beneficial churn of organic matter that makes nutrients more available to plants. Other research has also shown that earthworms can facilitate the production of plant-growth-promoting hormones and help plants protect themselves against common soil pathogens. [Emphasis added.]
These services are delivered by soft, squishy annelid worms that are easily crushed. The soil is their dark utopia. Moving about with radial and longitudinal muscles, they “worm” their way through each crevice, plowing the soil in a way that helps plant roots navigate to nutrients the worms have made available.
How Worms Squirm
Take a look at a graphic on Phys.org from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. What are those intricately sculptured concave disks? They are impressions of radial worm muscles just 1 millimeter in diameter. The structure allows the muscles to “introvert” like a plunger as the worm stretches and squeezes. They are works of art.
These particular muscles are not from earthworms (annelids) but from cycloneuralians, “a group of animals that includes roundworms, horsehair worms, mud dragons, and many other creatures.” This kind of structure is required for worms to navigate through the tight spaces in their environments. And they were detected in fossils from the early Cambrian!
In this study, the researchers described three phosphatized and millimeter-sized specimens from the early Fortunian Kuanchuanpu Formation (ca. 535 Ma) of China. Among them, one specimen (NIGP179459) is better preserved, and consists of five successively larger rings that are interconnected with 19 radial and 36 longitudinal structures. The rings were compressed to certain degrees, implying that they were pliable when alive.
Muscles imply nerves and coordination by a central nervous system. A diagram further down in the article shows the arrangement of seven kinds of radial and longitudinal muscles. The musculature in annelids (which also abruptly appeared in the Cambrian Explosion) is no less wondrous, as shown in a diagram from Penn State. The next time you bait a hook, that diagram may give you pause for what you are about to do to a marvelously designed animal. But fish need to eat, right? You’re just doing your part for the balance of nature.
The Chinese scientists published their work in the longstanding British journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Did they think to mention the Cambrian Explosion? Yes, but only as a marvel of evolution. “This work supports the evolution of scalidophoran-like or priapulan-like introvert musculature in cycloneuralians at the beginning of the Cambrian Period.” Preach it, brother.
The Underworld
More than half of the world’s biodiversity, from microbes to mammals, may live underground, according to a survey conducted by Mark A. Anthony and colleagues in a PNAS paper….
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David Coppedge, B.S. Education, B.S. Physics, founded Creation-Evolution Headlines in late 2000 as a way to share science news he was encountering at NASA. It has grown into a highly-trusted source of news and commentary critical of the pro-Darwin consensus, providing analysis of breaking news of interest to creationists and evolutionists, without the Darwin spin. He has authored over 7,000 entries at CEH since its inception.