Invasive earthworms may be taking a toll on sugar maples
by Sarah Zielinski
3:00pm, August 30, 2017
Earthworms are great for soil, right? Well, not always. In places where there have been no earthworms for thousands of years, foreign worms can wreak havoc on soils. And that can cause a cascade of problems throughout an area’s food web. Now comes evidence that invader worms in the Upper Great Lakes may be stressing the region’s sugar maples.
There are native earthworms in North America, but not in regions that had been covered in glaciers during the Ice Age. Once the ice melted, living things returned. Earthworms don’t move that quickly, though, and even after 10,000 years, they’ve only made small inroads into the north on their own.
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/wild-things/invasive-earthworms-may-be-taking-toll-sugar-maples
