Earthworm – the soil-maker, without whom we’d struggle to feed ourselves | Invertebrates

The folks have spoken and the selection of Guardian readers for the ultimate nominee for UK invertebrate of the yr is resounding: all hail Lumbricus terrestris, the widespread earthworm.

The widespread earthworm – also called the lob worm, dew worm, nightcrawler and, in Germany, the rain worm – is the soil-maker. With out its labours, we might battle to feed ourselves.

Worms can deliver 40 tonnes of soil to the floor per hectare a yr in Britain. They’re the engineers of an ecosystem that could be as various because the Amazon rainforest. Their diggings aerate soil and so they pull fallen leaves and different natural matter into the earth and recycle them. Worms make soils much less liable to flooding in winter and fewer baking onerous in summer time, they increase microbial exercise and, in fact, help plant development.

However #VoteWorm is to have fun majesty and dignity too. These are attractive creatures, many shades of pink, stretching out to 35cm lengthy, and coiling and gliding – by no means “slithering”, because the pestilent centipede put it in James and the Large Peach – by means of the earth.

The worm’s backers know this effectively. Lily, aged 4, nominates the earthworm “as a result of they assist make compost to assist our backyard develop, they really feel very mushy and when they have mud on them they’re like a wiggly piece of string”.

We expect the myopic grownup world is blind to the brilliance of worms however they’ve lengthy had influential advocates from Cleopatra and Charles Darwin to George Monbiot.

At present, Guardian-reading soil scientists and horticulturalists make a robust case to Vote Worm however so, too, does Gill from North Wales, who has been earthworm-phobic since she was Lily’s age. “A lot gratitude for all the beating ones, the little thready ones, the slimy ones, the knotted ones, those with ‘saddles’, the blue-tinged ones, even the large ones stretching terrifyingly throughout my drive when the bottom is sodden,” she writes. “Thanks all, for what you do.”

Take heed of Trevor Lawson from Amersham. Not solely are earthworms critically necessary, he argues, they’re “the perfect image of all the pieces that issues about being an invertebrate in our anthropocentric worldview – weak, crushable, not often thought-about, even despised for his or her obvious blind ignorance, and but by means of sheer pressure of numbers and extraordinary evolutionary adaptation, they’re able to shaping the complete world round us as we, in our personal wilful ignorance, stumble blindly on.”

#VoteWorm’s final phrase goes to reader Jacqui from Wiltshire who says: “200 phrases for this hero?! Actually! Give the worm a gong!”

At midnight on Friday 12 April, voting will open to determine the Guardian’s UK invertebrate of the yr with the winner to be introduced on Monday 15 April.