Q&A: Soil Ecosystems and Microbial Life
Frank Ashwood answers audience questions on the complex life within soil, from unique organism adaptations to the environmental impacts on subterranean ecosystems.
Thank you for being a member of the Royal Institution’s YouTube channel. This is your members-only Q&A with soil ecologist Frank Ashwood, recorded straight after his talk on the ecosystem of life underground.
The audience came armed with brilliant questions: could springtails inspire slippery bottle coatings, how do rotifers fit stolen DNA into their genomes, how can a slime mould be one cell with many nuclei, and what should you do with a 50-foot garden to help the life in your soil? Frank also covers earthworm cocoons, why the Amazon’s poor soil is so rich in life, how drought and climate change affect soil organisms, and how AI is starting to identify springtails and mites.