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Tales From The Underground: A Natural History Of Subterranean Life, by David Wolfe
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There are over one billion organisms in a pinch of soil, and many of them perform functions essential to all life on the planet. Yet we know much more about deep space than about the universe below. In Tales from the Underground, Cornell ecologist David W. Wolfe lifts the veil on this hidden world, revealing for the first time what makes subterranean life so unique and so precious. Home to miniscule water bears and microscopic bacteria, mole rats and burrowing owls, the underground reigns supreme as it produces important pharmaceuticals, recycles life's essential elements, and helps plants gather nutrients. An original, awe-inspiring journey through a strange realm, Tales from the Underground will forever alter our appreciation of the natural world around-and beneath-us.
- Sales Rank: #1189035 in eBooks
- Published on: 2009-04-28
- Released on: 2009-04-28
- Format: Kindle eBook
Amazon.com Review
Step into your backyard, David Wolfe suggests at the outset of this engaging book, and push your thumb and index finger into the root zone of a patch of grass. The pinch of soil you bring up will be a world of its own: "You will likely be holding," he writes, "close to one billion individual living organisms, perhaps ten thousand distinct species of microbes, most of them not yet named, catalogued, or understood."
Scientists are only beginning to comprehend the wealth of life that lies below the earth's surface, observes Wolfe, a soil scientist at Cornell University. Apart from familiar, easily observable subterranean creatures--earthworms, say, or prairie dogs--those scientists have found there progressively tinier forms of life, from "water bears" (tardigrades) and dust mites to microbes whose existence miles below the earth's surface provides keys to the origins of life itself. Noting that the total biomass below the surface may well exceed that above it, Wolfe takes his readers on a learned tour of the subsurface biosphere, layer by layer, mile by mile. What he reports is surprising, and oddly inspiring--for, Wolfe notes, although the human footprint on the soil is deep indeed, and getting deeper, plenty of life occurs beyond our reach.
"We know more about the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil underfoot," Leonardo da Vinci observed five hundred year ago. Wolfe's book helps diminish some of our ignorance, and it is a pleasure to be educated through the course of his pages. --Gregory McNamee
From Publishers Weekly
The world around us, according to Wolfe, a Cornell University plant physiologist, isn't quite as it appears. Our perspective is skewed because we are "surface chauvinists" when, in fact, a great deal of the earth's biological activity occurs underground. "The latest scientific data suggest that the total biomass of the life beneath our feet is much more vast than all that we observe aboveground." Wolfe does a superb job of describing in nontechnical, accessible terms the major groups of organisms living below ground and the ecological roles they play. Whether he is writing of bacteria, fungi, earthworms, prairie dogs, black-footed ferrets and burrowing owls or the scientists who study them Wolfe is consistently engaging. He argues convincingly that life on our planet most likely began not in some primordial ocean but rather deep beneath the surface under extreme temperature conditions, and that this information needs to inform our search for extraterrestrial life. These largely unseen ecological communities play surprisingly critical roles in human civilization, from aiding in soil formation to assisting plant growth and from controlling the world's nitrogen cycle to helping curtail soil erosion. Wolfe, by asserting that many of our current ecological practices run the risk of disrupting the lives of our subterranean neighbors, raises issues and questions that deserve a wide hearing. Illus.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Although a few geniuses, including Charles Darwin, who devoted his last years to studying the earthworm, intuited the busy realm beneath our feet, the subterranean proved impossible to fathom until twentieth-century technology provided the proper tools. Cornell ecologist Wolfe now conducts a pioneering and illuminating journey through the underground, beginning thousands of feet beneath the surface where extremophiles, immense microbial ecosystems, flourish without sunlight or water. The discovery of what may well be the direct descendants of the planet's first life-forms has cued scientists to the possibility of underground life on other planets and revolutionized perceptions of life on Earth. Wolfe cites Dr. Carl Woese's painstaking research into the genetics of subsurface microbes and identification of an "entire new superkingdom," Archea, as a watershed event that redrew the tree of life, relegating plants and animals to two small branches. As Wolfe eloquently describes such essential phenomena as the symbiosis between plants and soil fungus, readers will share his awe over how much more there is to nature than meets the eye. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Additionally it is technical enough that it is easy to look up information about particular things that were ...
By D
This is a really well written and interesting book. It really pulls you in as it explains the technical side of the microorganisms under out feet in a simple manner. Additionally it is technical enough that it is easy to look up information about particular things that were mentioned.
21 of 21 people found the following review helpful.
Surprises Down Below
By Rob Hardy
According to David W. Wolfe, you are probably guilty of a form of chauvinism you didn't even know existed, "surface chauvinism." You know there are roots down there, and you have seen earthworms, but other than those, you may not have any appreciation for just how complicated things are beneath your feet. Wolfe, who does research in soil conservation and biodiversity, has set out to increase appreciation for his world, in Tales from the Underground: A Natural History of Subterranean Life (Perseus Publishing). Not only can you stop being a surface chauvinist, but by reading this book you will have a foundation in some radically new biological ideas that are changing foundations of science.
In these pages, you will meet Dr. Carl Woese, who in 1976 suspected that the lowly methane-producing soil bacterium he was examining was something entirely different. He started doing analyses on the nucleic acid (specifically, RNA) in the creatures, and confirmed that they were more different from regular bacteria than humans are from redwood trees. He had not found a new species, but an entirely new superkingdom of organisms. You will become acquainted with microbial communities thousands of feet down, who thrive in hot temperatures, dark, high pressure, and lack of oxygen. They feed on oil or other carbon sources, or on hydrogen in the rocks. One of the results of these findings is that they seem to make the possibility of life on other planets more likely; it used to be that we looked for planets that had just about the same sunlight, water, and so on as our own, but this was another example of chauvinism. You will find out just how the lowly fungus has an intimate and essential relation to the roots of almost every plant, and about prairie dogs, and other animals digging around underneath.
Of course earthworms get a chapter in this enjoyable book, and the chapter is especially enjoyable because it concentrates on the work of Charles Darwin. Darwin has other claims to fame, but his last published work was on the humble earthworm. He studied them for decades, and even did an experiment of spreading chalk over a field and returning twenty-nine years later to see how much soil and vegetable mould had been brought up by the earthworms (six inches). The mild and tentative Darwin could not avoid controversy even in his ardent work on earthworms. Before his work, earthworms were regarded as garden pests which ate up the roots of plants, and though we now value earthworms, it took a while for their reputation to change.
Wolfe shows how soils are generally suppressants of disease (Selman Waksman was a soil biologist who found microbes that produced streptomycin), how bioremediation can be affected by humble bacteria or fungi that tie up heavy metals or clean up oil spills, and how by working with, rather than against, the millions of species within the earth, we might reclaim soil and reduce global warming. Leonardo da Vinci said, "We know more about the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil underfoot." It is still true, but let us hope Wolfe's efforts make some difference.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
Great introduction to subterranean life
By Tim F. Martin
_Tales from the Underground_ by David W. Wolfe is an excellent though rather brief introduction to the organisms that live underground; it is only 188 pages long, 206 if one count's the end notes and bibliography (which are quite worthwhile to at least browse). One of the things I liked about the book was that Wolfe was clearly enthusiastic about his subject and expressed a real sense of wonder for the fascinating organisms that dwell under the earth's surface.
He began the book with a nice overall introduction to the subject, more than sufficient to grab my attention. In one just pinch of soil from your backyard, you will be holding close to one billion individual living organisms, including quite a few that are not named, classified, or in any way studied, animals ranging in size from the tiniest of microbes to microscopic threads of fungal hyphae, the total length of which might be best measured in miles, not inches. In a handful of soil there are more creatures than humans currently alive. A typical square yard of soil contains billions of microscopic roundworms called nematodes, a dozen to several hundred earthworms, 100,000 to 500,000 insects and other arthropods, and staggering numbers of single-celled organisms. After reviewing some basics about soil layers and types, he went into more detail about this subterranean world.
The first chapter discussed the origins of life on earth, much of which had to do with life in the soil. The complex structure and chemistry of clay crystals may have played a vital role in the development of life, perhaps initially serving as the "infrastructure" of the first, most primitive organisms, this infrastructure eventually being discarded as more and more organic molecules such as those in amino and nucleic acids took over clay's replication and synthesis functions. According to some theorists clay made possible the very first sequencing of simple proteins and genes thanks to its unique properties.
Chapter two introduced the "extremophiles," organisms that live in hostile environments, many of which exist in subterranean conditions. Some organisms "breathe in" iron oxide (rust) as a substitute for oxygen, while others are able to incorporate cobalt and even uranium into their biological processes. Much of the chapter gave the history of the study of extremophiles, as biologists continually had to revise their notions of what life could tolerate as they found organisms living at ever higher temperatures and depths (with organism at 9,000 foot depths and at temperatures higher than 160 degrees Fahrenheit having been discovered). Of further interest, these organisms may be the most common in the world, with some calculations showing that their total biomass exceeds that of all surface life. Study of one group, lithotrophic microbes, which live buried in basalt rock deep beneath the surface, has been vital in the search for life on other planets.
Chapter three focused primarily on Dr. Carl Woese of the University of Illinois, a researcher who discovered an entire new microbial superkingdom of organisms, the Archaea, a finding that radically changed how the various kingdoms of organisms were classified, a discovery that was highly controversial, as he changed the tree of life from one based primarily on visual characteristics to one based on his molecular approach. Woese found that a number of organisms assumed to be bacteria were something entirely different, as different from bacteria at least as plants are from animals. In the end the new tree of life consists of three superkingdoms or domains, Bacteria, Archaea (which includes many extremophiles), and Eukarya (which encompasses plants, animals, fungi, and protozoa).
Chapter four emphasized the importance of "nitrogen-fixers," a small group of bacteria and archaea that are able to convert nitrogen gas in the atmosphere into a form the rest of life on earth can use, a biological innovation every bit as important as the advent of photosynthesis to the history of life on earth. Wolfe showed the rather intricate symbiosis between nitrogen-fixers and plants as well their complex biology. He also discussed the role of denitrifiers, organisms that aid in the recycling of nitrogen on earth as they are able to convert soil nitrates back into atmospheric nitrogen.
Chapter five dealt with the equally important symbiosis between plants and highly specialized underground fungi, vital in enabling plants to obtain water and nutrients from the soil (and occasionally other plants). More than 90% of the higher plants on the planet today benefit from their association with the delicate threadlike hyphae in their roots, a group known as mycorrhizal fungus. Wolfed discussed the two types, arbuscular mycorrhizae (so named because their unique branching, tree-shaped hyphal structures) and the ectomycorrhizae, both of which are the foundation of most terrestrial ecosystems.
Chapter six dealt with earthworms, much of it providing information and anecdotes about Charles Darwin's decades long study of them. Also vital to ecosystems, they act as biological blenders, fragmenting plant debris and mixing it with the soil and living and dead microbial biomass, creating more surface area for further production of humus.
The next chapter discussed some of the good and bad effects on human health of soil organisms. The passages on the soil-borne pathogen _Clostridium tetani_, the cause of tetanus, made for chilling reading. Wolfe also related information about the fungus-like _Phytopthora infestans_, which causes potato late blight, source of the 1840s potato famine in Ireland (and a disease that may be making a comeback). Soil organisms have also done a lot of good; the root fungus _Trichoderma harzianum_ targets a variety of disease-causing soil microbes, and working in the 1940s soil biologist Dr. Selman Waksman discovered a number of potent antibiotics from soil bacteria.
Chapter eight was quite interesting, dealing with the interesting life history and often tragic human history of three animals, the prairie dog, black-footed ferret, and burrowing owl.
The final chapter dealt with the primary threats to soil ecology, notably soil erosion, toxic waste, and climatic change (both acid rain and global warming).
A great introduction to subterranean life, worthwhile reading.
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