What is the ‘point’ of earthworms? If they all disappeared tomorrow, would there be any impact? (Other than a food source loss for some animals)

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As above. Sorry if this is a silly question!

I realise there is no ‘point’ to any particular animal or plant, but you often find that various species provide some sort of benefit (e.g. plants giving out oxygen, those birds that clean crocodiles’ teeth, spiders eat a lot of flies).

I just wondered if worms are particularly ‘useful’, because they don’t seem to do much from what I can tell

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Well it depends on which earthworm – in North America we have invasive worms which can actually damage the forest topsoil by basically eating too much. But generally speaking the sheer amount and variety of life in the top 2 feet or so of soil is staggering. There are so many near microscopic little worms and insects and things that don’t have names that it would make your head spin. We take “life on earth” for granted and tend to focus on megafauna – I mean we are megafauna after all. But life both in the ocean and the soil is built on a pyramid of microscopic and then near microscopic organisms including worms. If one worm disappeared prob nothing would happen no. If all worms disappeared we’d be in. Trouble

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