Source: Laboratories of Margaret Workman and Kimberly Frye - Depaul University

Using mustard, Lumbricus terrestris earthworm populations can be sampled directly from soil depths without landscape disturbance or toxicity. Earthworms can then be counted for data and statistical analysis using a bar graph and student’s t-test.

Monitoring earthworm populations is a vital technique for environmental scientists, as multiple species of earthworms (most notably those from the suborder Lumbricina) have been invasively spreading throughout North America and South America. Exotic earthworms can be found on nearly every land mass and in nearly every ecosystem on the planet, and where and when these species become invasive has been a focus of international environmental research.¹

Ecological invasion typically lowers biodiversity of an ecosystem by directly outcompeting, endangering, or otherwise contributing to the extirpation of native species. As ecosystem engineers, invasive earthworm species alter the cycling of nutrients through decomposition rates of organic matter on the upper horizons of soil, where plant roots mine for nutrients. Invasive Lumbricus species have both extirpated native earthworm species and have been shown to increase the available nitrogen concentration and rates of nitrogen in invaded soils.² In a positive feedback loop, accelerated levels of nitrogen in turn make the system more hospitable to invasive plant species that are adapted to high levels of nitrogen compared to native plant species, and will outcompete natives in a phenomenon known as “invasion meltdown.” An invasion meltdown relationship has been proposed for invasive earthworm species Lumbricus terrestris (European earthworm) and an invasive plant species Rhamnus cathartica (European Buckthorn).³