Dirt and Detritivores
The dirt info…I’m just gonna throw it out there.
Dirt is brown because:
1) Plants die and fall down on the ground.
2) Saprobes, microbes, they eat the dead plants. Yum yum.
3) These microbes can’t eat all of it, so they leave behind some carbon, and that carbon stays in the soil. You can also say that the microbes leave humic substances. Wiki says, “Humic substances arise by the microbial degradation of biomolecules (lipids, proteins, carbohydrates, lignin) dispersed in the environment after the death of living cells.”
4) The carbon/humic stuff is brown.
5) Thus, dirt looks brown. Usually. Sometimes, if there’s, like, clay and sand and other weird deposits, it might look less brown. If there’s less carbon, chances are the dirt will be less brown.
Would you like to read more about dirt being brown? Here’s a link to the LiveScience article that told me about it all.
Speaking of saprobes (as I said above, the bacteria that break down the dead plants are saprobes because they eat and break down dead things), Tubifex worms are saprophages, or detritivores. Detritivore - an animal who eats detritus, like rotting dead things or organic waste material. The term is applied to animals, to real fancy-like, complex living things. Microbes are not detritivores, but the detritivores sometimes break dead things down so that they are easier for the microbes to eat. They work as a team in that way, helping to keep our dirt brown.
Smiling emoticon.
For those of you interested in how detritivores can help save your fishtank, check out this link.
detritivores, dirt, worm, saprobes, carbon, organic waste, soil
