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Soil life, soil biota, soil fauna, or edaphon is a collective term that encompasses all organisms that spend a significant portion of their life cycle within a soil profile, or at the soil-litter interface. These organisms include earthworms, nematodes, protozoa, fungi, bacteria, different arthropods, as well as some reptiles (such as snakes ...
Fungi are abundant in soil, but bacteria are more abundant. Fungi are important in the soil as food sources for other, larger organisms, pathogens, beneficial symbiotic relationships with plants or other organisms and soil health. Fungi can be split into species based primarily on the size, shape and color of their reproductive spores, which ...
The burrowers loosen the soil so that oxygen and water can penetrate it, and both surface and burrowing worms help to produce soil by mixing organic and mineral matter, by accelerating the decomposition of organic matter and thus making it more quickly available to other organisms, and by concentrating minerals and converting them to forms that ...
Consequently, the horizontal patchy distribution of soil properties (soil temperature, moisture, pH, litter/nutrient availability, etc.) also drives the patchiness of the soil organisms across the landscape, [20] and has been one of the main arguments for explaining the great diversity observed in soil communities. [21]
Given that these organisms also require a supply of nutrient salts, in other words fertilizer, for photosynthesis, their relationship with detritus is a complex one. In land ecosystems, the waste products of plants and animals collect mainly on the ground (or on the surfaces of trees), and as decomposition proceeds, plants are supplied with ...
Tillandsia bourgaei growing on an oak tree in Mexico. An epiphyte is a plant or plant-like organism that grows on the surface of another plant and derives its moisture and nutrients from the air, rain, water (in marine environments) or from debris accumulating around it. The plants on which epiphytes grow are called phorophytes.
Xero-halophytes (grow on dry or mostly dry lands) Aero-halines (epiphytes and aerophytes) Again, according to Iversen (1936), these plants are classified with respect to the salinity of the soil on which they grow. [3] Oligo-halophytes (amount of NaCl in the soil is 0.01 to 0.1%) Meso-halophytes (amount of NaCl in the soil is 0.1 to 1%)
Soil salinity can vary between extremes in a relatively small area; [27] this allows plants to seek areas with less salinity. It is hard to determine which plants can grow in soil with high salinity because the soil salinity is not uniform, even in small areas. [27] However, plants absorb nutrients from areas with lower salinity. [27]