This hearkens back to what my PhD thesis would have been all about had I followed through. More importantly it speaks to importance and power of a biodiverse orchard ecosystem and especially the soil food web. The soil food web of course is not fungi and bacteria, but nematodes, protozoa, a whole slew of microarthropods, macroarthorpods, and higher order animals. They all depend on each other (in sometimes not so pretty ways) and in this case its the microarthropods that are taking care of the leaf litter (though I do have to wonder where Scott's worms fit in to all of this). I doubt the collembola have a specific preference for only one species of Marssonina (M. juglandis v M. caronaria) over the other, since they are also eating other parts of the plant and fungal body, it just doesn't seem evolutionarily appropriate to only feed on a single fungal species. As well, and this goes to a conversation I was having the other day, many species feed on mushrooms not just for sustenance but for health and immunity purposes (is there any difference). Paul Stamets has shown that bees feed on polypore mushrooms as a way to increase the overall health and immunity of the hive. And this makes total sense, as does the potential that the microarthropods and other members of the soil food also feed on fungi and bacteria not just for food but health and immune boosting properties. None of this should be a surprise to this group. What it does speak to is more micro-investigation of what's going on the soils profile. How biodiverse is your soil food web? How healthy is the supporting environment - pesticides, toxins, pollution, lack of oxygen, water quantity and quality? And then of course what are you doing to improve and support the soil ecosystem? And so the question of - maybe we just "plant" more collembola - isn't really the question we need to ask, it's how do we create a healthy soil that supports an appropriate biodiverse range of life.
I recently asked the question of whether we should really be paying for non-indigenous microbes when we have a perfectly good indigenous microbes right in our backyards. There are benefits to both I believe and yet for some reason I'm stuck thinking that indigenous microbes are better adapted to our local environments, soils, and soil food webs. We know for example that parasitic nematodes are great, but they don't all survive in northern climates (e.g., S. riobrava). However, I am also aware the nature is pretty adaptable. Then I remembered the term 'pleomorphism' from the Microbiology 101 days.
In microbiology, pleomorphism is the ability of some micro-organisms to alter their morphology, biological functions, or reproductive modes in response to environmental conditions. Meaning that life is adaptable. Some life adapts more quickly, other not so much. But organisms like bacteria and fungi with relatively short life cycles can be presumed to quickly adapt to whatever new environment they get thrown into. But, the question of whether all manufactured microbes are equally pleomorphic or not - or can even become as adapted as indigenous microbes - the simple take-away is that the more individual strands of the soil food web that we can encourage and support the better. And that nature usually provides all that it needs.
Would transplanting some partially decomposed and infected AO leaves into an orchard setting provide the necessary microarthropod component needed to to see the soil in perpetuity? Maybe just interplanting AO (or along the orchard perimeter) with trees will provide enough leaf litter to support the higher levels of collembola. We do know that AO provides numerous other benefits to an orchard environment, like nitrogen fixing. And its invasive "properties" not withstanding, AO could be the perfect orchard understory bush (help me permaculturists - a Level 3 mid-story canopy plant?) that fixes nitrogen, feed the birds, provides edible and ciderable fruit, encourages soil biodiversity, etc.
This year Jason and I made an apple cider blend with AO fruit. The fermentation (all wild) was the most vigorous and cleanest of all the blends. It seems there is something magically clean and alive about AO that benefits many levels of life. I do have some other materials (thanks again Eliza) that I plan on reading that deeper into this study she referenced. So hopefully more to come on all of this.
Mike Biltonen, Know Your RootsZone 5b in New York
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/14/2020 02:21PM by Mike Biltonen.