![]() This story is part of Conversation Insights We discovered that the beetle may be playing a vital role in stabilising soil biology, which is essential if the soil system is to act as a carbon sink and help reduce atmospheric carbon emissions. It became clear that by looking at the impact of carrion beetles and a dead carcass on the underlying soil, we might reveal a new driver of ecosystem functioning. ![]() She hadn’t considered how these antimicrobial secretions might have effects beyond the carcass and in the soil itself. Sheena’s focus, meanwhile, had always been on the beetles. If carrion beetles were having a significant impact on the soil then this would represent a large blind spot in our understanding of it. In the last two decades we have started to appreciate how important soil and plants are to our life and to the climate. This was of great interest to me because people who study soil generally concentrate on how soil microbes interact with plants, rather than animals. ![]() The production of these substances only starts when parents find a carcass.Įxamples of tiny soil fauna that live in soil. She and her team have found that the beetle parents produce antimicrobial substances called lysozymes in their secretions. Soil microbes are microscopic forms of life (mostly bacteria and fungi) that live in soil. Carrion beetles have to contend with nematodes, tiny worms which climb up through the beetle’s orifice, delivering a deadly bacteria that turns its insides into a nutritious soup that the nematodes can breed in.īut Sheena is particularly interested in how the beetles defend their babies and the carcass they are feeding on against soil microbes. For example, there’s the “ zombie fungi” that burrow into the brains of ants and manipulate their behaviour, or hairworms that make their host leap into water just before the hairworm emerges. She studies how these beetles use their immune systems to defend themselves against parasites and diseases. ![]() Sheena and I had more in common than I initially thought. Carrion beetles and soil are similar in the way they sit at this interface between the living and the dead. But I see soil very differently: as a very thin, breathing skin of the planet, full of myriad different, beautiful forms of invisible life – an ecosystem that enables life to reform from death. Most people, including fellow biologists, basically see soil as a place of death – full of dead plants and animals, which eventually decompose into pieces. Over the next few months my feelings changed. I confess the thought of dead corpses stuffed with creepy crawlies was initially repellent to me (especially just after lunch) but back then I really didn’t know much about the incredible biology of these beetles. The carrion beetles (also known as burying beetles or sexton beetles), which Sheena researches, are masters of death: they breed in the dead carcass of a mouse or a bird and, together with their larval brood, reduce it to bones and skin in a very short time. I had just finished lunch at a “research away day” when I got caught up in a conversation about carrion beetles with a new colleague of mine, Sheena Cotter. It was Halloween and the discussion had inevitably turned to death – and flesh-eating zombies.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |