Greetings, Ecologers, This year, in turning my compost and digging my garden beds in Syracuse, NY, I have noticed markedly fewer earthworms than in previous years, and I am wondering of others of you have observed this also. This could be one of those natural, mysterious population fluctuations, but I'm wondering if it has something to do with the unusually warm winter. Here are some possibilities that have occurred to me:
1. The warmth might have favored some enemy (predator, disease, or parasite) of the worms, letting them kill off a large percentage of the population. 2. The lack of snow cover might have allowed such cold as there was to affect the worms more strongly (i.e., allowed more heat to escape the ground, resulting in lower soil temperatures) 3. Maybe it's not a question of temperature so much as the number of times the soil freezes and thaws, which might have a deleterious effect. I don't know whether there were significantly more or fewer than usual freeze/thaw events this winter in this area. I have not noticed any difference in abundance of other largish soil animals, like isopods, slugs, millipedes, beetle grubs, etc. Martin M. Meiss
