...niches available to other organisms and so contribute to biodiversity. Charles Darwin wrote of them: 'It may be doubted whether there are many other animals...so important a part in the history of the world as these lowly organised creatures'. The medicinal leech Hirudo medicinalis is an ectoparasite which sucks...

...attention for more than a hundred years. Charles Darwin (1881) summarized their natural role concisely: "It may be doubted whether there are many other animals...the world, as have these lowly organized creatures." Since the early 1960s a group of researchers headed by EL Cooper have investigated the fundamental...

...existed the land was m fact regularly ploughed, and still continues to be thus ploughed by earthworms. It may be doubted whether there are many other animals...the world, as have these lowly organized creatures. — Charles Darwin, The Fonnation of Vegesable Mould. Through the Action of Wonns, with Observations...

...claim for themselves. 'Lowly organised creatures' - with all its middle-class fears of unionizing - who have played so important a part in the history of the world is surely, as a description, a side attack on something all too topical. It would be silly to suggest...

...excessive (appendix F). Earthworms are the most conspicuous soil invertebrates. Darwin (1881) thought that "it may be doubted whether there are many other animals...the world, as have these lowly organized creatures" (p. 3 1 6), but their mass is usually just around 5 g/m2 (fig. 7.1). Only in cultivated soils may there...

...wrote a book about them praising their role in ploughing the earth. 'It may be doubted', he wrote, 'whether there are many other animals which have played...the world as have these lowly organized creatures.' But in much of Britain today, worms no longer plough the fields; they have vanished down the stomachs...

...sound and vibration. He was the first to realize how vitally important worms are to soil fertility. "It may be doubted whether there are many other animals...so important a part in the history of the world," he wrote in his masterwork on the subject The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms...

...Mould Through the Action of Worms with Observations on Their Habits. In this book, Darwin extolled, 'It may be doubted whether there are many other animals...the world, as have these lowly organized creatures." The earthworm has been termed "the most efficient of all plows" and "an unpaid plowman." Earthworms...

...with Observations of Their Habits, which called attention to the beneficial effects of earthworms: "It may be doubted whether there are many other animals...the world, as have these lowly organized creatures." Since then, a vast literature has established the importance of earthworms as biological agents in...

...then incorporation. Throughout the text, he emphasizes the tremendous influence of worms on the earth: "It may be doubted whether there are many other animals...part in the history of the world, as have these lowly creatures" (316). "In his characteristically modest way," Adam Phillips notes, "Darwin is shuffling...