As the Worm Turns

Scott LaFee
Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700
Lifestyle

As allergens go, ragweed is much reviled, not the least because it seems ubiquitous. But the next time you sneeze, don't just blame the plant. Curse earthworms, too.

New research by scientists at Ohio State University suggests that earthworms (at least those in the Midwest) appear to deliberately gather and bury ragweed seeds, thus helping the plant to thrive.

The scientists studied the behavior of European night crawlers (Lumbricus terrestris). They noted that the worms collected and buried more than 90 percent of the ragweed seeds found in surface soil around their burrows. Indeed, there were six times as many seeds in the worms' burrows as in the surrounding soil.
Updated: Wed Aug 20, 2008

As allergens go, ragweed is much reviled, not the least because it seems ubiquitous. But the next time you sneeze, don't just blame the plant. Curse earthworms, too.

New research by scientists at Ohio State University suggests that earthworms (at least those in the Midwest) appear to deliberately gather and bury ragweed seeds, thus helping the plant to thrive.

The scientists studied the behavior of European night crawlers (Lumbricus terrestris). They noted that the worms collected and buried more than 90 percent of the ragweed seeds found in surface soil around their burrows. Indeed, there were six times as many seeds in the worms' burrows as in the surrounding soil.

The seeds provide no apparent benefit to the worms themselves, but the worms' burial activities definitely help ragweed, ensuring that fewer seeds are eaten by birds, rodents and beetles.

VERBATIM

If we wish to know the force of human genius, we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning, we may study his commentators.

— English writer William Hazlitt (1778-1830)

BRAIN SWEAT

What one-word anagram of A CENT TIP might describe a cent tip?

PRIME NUMBERS

15 — Years of planning and construction for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), scheduled to open on the Swiss-Franco border in September

8 billion — Cost of the collider, in dollars

17 — Length, in miles, of the subatomic racetrack

330 — Depth underground, in feet

20,000 — Tons of metal used in construction

9,300 — Magnets used to speed atoms to near light speed

60 — Amount of liquid helium, in metric tons, required to cool the collider's magnets

14 trillion — Electron volts generated by the collider

600 million — Number of times per second atoms will smash into each other when the collider is operating

0 — Official estimated risk that the collider will create a black hole that will swallow Earth (something some critics say could happen)

Sources: UC Santa Cruz; MIT; Science News; CERN

BRAIN SWEAT ANSWER

PITTANCE

'TRUE FACTS'

Gila monsters spend up to 95 percent of their lives underground.

BLOGOSPHERE

Bad astronomy

blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/

For more than a decade, astronomer Phil Plait has explored and explained space science, deftly dismantling the various hoaxes and bad research that float around like so much space junk.

His old site is still available, but recently Plait moved his blog to Discover magazine, where it's likely to get more exposure and readership.

QUIRKS OF NATURE

Female Hawaiian damselflies usually have grass-green bodies. However, at higher elevations and with less vegetation and cover, biologists say, females often are bright red, just like males. The presumption was that the females mimicked male coloration to reduce the relentless pursuit of sex-obsessed males.

But Idelle Cooper of Indiana University has a different theory: that the females have evolved the red coloration because, with less vegetation, they are much more exposed to the sun. The red pigment may defuse potentially damaging free radicals in tissues exposed to sunlight.

JUST ASKING

How do you draw a blank?

OUR IGNOBEL HISTORY

In 1988, Robert W. Faid, an engineer and amateur mathematician from Greenville, S.C., calculated the exact odds that Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the late USSR, was the Antichrist.

His answer: 710,609,175,188,282,000 to 1.

For his invaluable work, Faid was awarded the 1993 Ig Nobel Prize in mathematics.

ANTHROPOLOGY 101

An old German love charm required a girl to procure a shoe belonging to her beloved and then urinate in it.