Global data on earthworm abundance, biomass, diversity and corresponding environmental properties

Abstract

Earthworms are an important soil taxon as ecosystem engineers, providing a variety of crucial ecosystem functions and services. Little is known about their diversity and distribution at large spatial scales, despite the availability of considerable amounts of local-scale data. Earthworm diversity data, obtained from the primary literature or provided directly by authors, were collated with information on site locations, including coordinates, habitat cover, and soil properties. Datasets were required, at a minimum, to include abundance or biomass of earthworms at a site. Where possible, site-level species lists were included, as well as the abundance and biomass of individual species and ecological groups. This global dataset contains 10,840 sites, with 184 species, from 60 countries and all continents except Antarctica. The data were obtained from 182 published articles, published between 1973 and 2017, and 17 unpublished datasets. Amalgamating data into a single global database will assist researchers in investigating and answering a wide variety of pressing questions, for example, jointly assessing aboveground and belowground biodiversity distributions and drivers of biodiversity change.

Earthworm Diversity and Distribution in Kathmandu, Bagmati Province, Central Nepal

“…Altogether Eight species of Earthworm were recorded belonging to two families; Lumbricidae including four genera Aporrectodea, Dendrobaena, Eisenia and Lumbricus and family Megascolecidae including two genera Perichaeta and Perionyx (Table 1). Species richness found to be low however, global database including more than 9000 surveys also had mentioned about zero to only 12 species in each survey (Phillips, 2021). It makes some relief that the study area is not in worst for earthworm diversity, which might due to its temperate location known to more diverse for earthworm than tropics and its climatic condition being more suitable for their existence (Bora, 2021;Phhillips, 2021).…”

“…It makes some relief that the study area is not in worst for earthworm diversity, which might due to its temperate location known to more diverse for earthworm than tropics and its climatic condition being more suitable for their existence (Bora, 2021;Phhillips, 2021). Species richness and their density depends on soil temperature, soil pH, annual rainfall and litter (Potvin and Lilleskov, 2017;Phillips, 2021). Species identification was troublesome due to their synonymous names (Table 1) and its morphological and anatomical complexities; which implies the immediate need of extensive taxonomic treatment on earthworm species, before they disappear and misidentified for the use on commercial purpose (Jaikishun, 2015).…”

“…Role and importance of earthworms has been explained since 1881 by Darwin exploring their activities (Brown, 2000;Mishra and Samal, 2021). Away from its exploration for role and importance, taxonomic consideration and distribution mapping is an immense need prior to any other examinations for their conservation (Phillips, 2019;Phillips, 2021). Expedition for the earthworm collection, identification and its classification has rarely been considered in Nepal, whereas, detail taxonomic and molecular databases are even available in…”

Potential of Meta-Omics to Provide Modern Microbial Indicators for Monitoring Soil Quality and Securing Food Production

“…It should be as universal as possible for the various microbiomes ( Schloter et al, 2018 ). Macro-fauna organisms (e.g., nematodes and earthworms) long remained the only indicators of soil biological quality because they were easily observed and well established in ISO standards ( Martinez-Salgado et al, 2010 ; Schloter et al, 2018 ; Phillips et al, 2021 ). Microorganisms were used as bioindicators of soil quality later, but only when the molecular ecology era began ( Maron et al, 2011 ).…”

Ecological data in Darwin Core: the case of earthworm surveys

“…Despite this, the amount of available data on the distribution of earthworms in the world is very limited. Recent studies ( Cameron 2018 , Phillips 2019 , Phillips 2021 ) have highlighted many gaps in our knowledge of the distribution of Lumbricidae , amongst which the territory of Russia is characterised by an extremely low amount of available data. For example, GBIF.org provides only 9602 occurrences of family Lumbricidae for the Russian territory ( GBIF.org.…”