Ecologist Ken Thompson explains how invertebrates make up the bulk of garden wildlife and are essential for a healthy ecosystem <\/p>
Many gardeners now actively garden with wildlife<\/a> in mind. A welcome development, but what does the gardener hope to get out of it? Is it enough simply to know that wildlife is thriving in your garden, or do you have to see visible evidence of that?<\/p> You may also like<\/p> The problem is that the wildlife you will see in your garden is only the tip of the iceberg; the bees<\/a>, birds and butterflies<\/a> are only about five per cent of even the larger inhabitants of the average garden. Most of the earthworms, slugs, snails, woodlice, centipedes, millipedes, harvestmen, spiders<\/a>, bugs, flies, sawflies, wasps, beetles, moths and ants are inevitably going to escape attention. And yet that lot, along with a larger and even less visible cast, make up the functioning, living, breathing garden ecosystem that ultimately supports the birds, the hedgehogs<\/a> and the frogs.<\/p> Most garden wildlife escapes attention because it\u2019s too small, too nocturnal, or (especially) too subterranean. Few people realise that at least half of all animal biomass on the planet is found below ground. Which all seems a bit less unlikely when you consider that by far the most abundant animals on Earth are nematodes (or roundworms).<\/p> Nematodes are tiny, just about visible with the naked eye, but there are about 4.4 x 1020 nematodes (or about 55 billion for every human) in the world\u2019s soils, and four out of every five individual land animals are nematodes.<\/p> Most nematodes are an important \u2013 and large \u2013 part of the soil ecosystem<\/p><\/blockquote> One reason nematodes are so successful is that they have adopted every possible means of making a living in soil. Some eat bacteria or other microbes, some eat fungi, some are herbivores and others are predators, sometimes of animals much larger than themselves.<\/p> To the gardener, a handful of nematodes are enemies (for example, plant parasitic eelworms), while a few are valuable friends, such as the nematodes you can buy to control slugs or vine weevils. But most are just an important \u2013 and large \u2013 part of the soil ecosystem<\/a>.<\/p> Ants are another group of animals that are more abundant than you realise. There are probably around 20 x 1015 individual ants worldwide, with a total weight greater than all wild birds and mammals combined.<\/p> I know many gardeners don\u2019t like ants, but like other invertebrates they\u2019re food for larger animals, and if you ever see a green woodpecker in your garden, ants are probably the reason.<\/p>The invertebrates we need to appreciate<\/h2>
Nematodes<\/h3>
Ants<\/h3>