MUD UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
Dirt is teeming with life, most of which is invisible to the eye
WORDS AILSA HARVEY
Eight-legged microfauna called tardigrades live in mud with a high water content
A 100-gram sample of soil can contain around 500 mites
If you step outside and look at some soil, it won’t take long until you see a creature of some sort. Many insects and other invertebrates call this environment their home, from burrowing earthworms that churn up and oxygenate the soil to ground beetles that hunt other insects on the surface. Yet the most abundant life forms in the mud are too small for us to see without a microscope: around 430 million bacteria species and 5.6 million fungi species exist in soil.