[Vision2020] NPR: Scientists Capture Elusive Giant PalouseEarthworm

[lfalen]

My wife works with these people. Earth worms are necessary to improve soil fertility and are a valid area for research. However (in my view), I would not place that much emphasis on this worm. particularly it will interfere with farming. 
Roger
-----Original message-----
From: Kenneth Marcy kmmos1 at verizon.net
Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2010 18:37:50 -0700
To: Wayne Price bear at moscow.com
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] NPR: Scientists Capture Elusive Giant PalouseEarthworm

> On Tuesday 27 April 2010 17:37:31 Wayne Price wrote:
> > This could be a good news-bad news story.
> 
> I think it is mostly a good news story, illustrating that diversity 
> among earthworm species extends itself even to our latitude and 
> longitude.
> 
> > We have confirmed that the worm is a giant palouse earthworm and
> > they exist,  the bad news is that these were the last two.
> 
> Since earthworms, generally, have been in the soil for six hundred 
> million years, and are suggested by some scientists as being the most 
> important species in the history of Earth's biology, it really would 
> be huge news if these were the last two. Even if we restrict 
> ourselves to considering the last two of this particular giant 
> Palouse species, I think it unlikely that all of these worms are so 
> silly as to allow themselves so close to the surface as to be 
> discovered by various predators, including H. sapiens.
> 
> In the possible, but unlikely, scenario that humans waste their time 
> trying to track down and eradicate this specific species of worms to 
> protect property rights, or some other such non-ecological reason, it 
> might turn into a bad-news story. However, Hog Heaven farmers have 
> been plowing and seeding and harvesting above these worms for the 
> better part of a century without ill effects to either species. Only 
> in the last handful of years has some curiosity has been raised, and, 
> unless most individuals of the earthworm species turn out to be 
> wildly exceptional in some way, the likely result is that they will 
> be ignored.
> 
> In some science fiction or fantasy world, say a planet-Earth-based 
> generation of Dune-Arrakis, for example, the worms might be in some 
> danger. If some Vandal scientist figured out how to genetically 
> modify them to grow 100 times larger, and then to encourage them to 
> produce some fantastic new fertilizer or spice or drug that could be 
> sold for riches even more addictive than ... well, you get the idea. 
> The worms are probably in danger only if they are discovered to be 
> worth more money than the crops that are presently grown above them.
> 
> Frank Herbert, RIP. We're going to re-read, not re-write, your work.
> 
> 
> Ken
> 
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