We cannot live without soil. It provides us with building materials, most of our antibiotics and 95 per cent of our food.
In, photographer and soil ecologist Frank Ashwood urges us to better appreciate and protect the soil we rely on. He does so with stunning images of the creatures that call soil home.
The adorable velvet worm in the main image was found under a log in a misty beech forest on the South Island of New Zealand. “They look like little worms rolled in sequins,” says Ashwood. But looks can be deceiving: “They crawl around and shoot glue out of special organs on their heads to immobilise their pray, which they’ll then go and eat while alive.”
Advertisement
A droplet of sperm deposited by a male springtail, a tiny insect-like creature, sits atop a delicate stem made of protein-rich secretions in the image below. “It’s like a lollipop, basically, with a bit of sperm-rich fluid on the top, which the males leave for the females to come and find,” says Ashwood.
But beware any marauding rivals. “If a male finds another springtail’s spermatophore, they will actually eat it to destroy it,” he says.
Below, a beautiful woodlouse spider stares straight down the lens of Ashwood’s camera. Its large fangs have evolved to better hunt woodlice. “They’ll come at a woodlouse from the top or the side, grasp it, then reach underneath with those sharp bits of the fangs and pierce into the soft underbelly,” he says.
A bright yellow slime mould stretches across a decaying log in the shot below. “It’s a big, sprawling mass of a single cell, essentially; they branch out looking for food,” says Ashwood. The mould’s efficient networks have been used to map road networks, the fastest way out of an IKEA showroom and dark matter throughout the universe, he says.
This gorgeous giant springtail, below, was found in a forest in New Zealand. Its orange spines help it camouflage against logs. “Because they’re rare, when you do see one, it’s a moment of pure exhilaration,” says Ashwood. “They’re an indicator of the forest being in really good condition.”
Ashwood, who is based at Lincoln University in New Zealand, snapped the silvery springtail below while in the UK. During the Victorian period in the 1800s, their iridescent scales were used to test microscopes. “They’ve got really ornate, tiny sculpturing on them, so the better detail you could see, the better your microscope,” he says.
Ashwood hopes his book will encourage people to protect soil, for instance by reducing deforestation and farming more sustainably. “Over half of the world’s biodiversity is in soil, and we’re losing it at a rate that is not sustainable,” he says.
When you make a purchase via the links on this page, we receive a commission.
