Native earthworms and roe deer in temperate forests: Friends in the sun, foes in the shade
Ludwig Lettenmaier, Nico Eisenhauer, Simone Cesarz, Christian Ammer, Anna Bucharova, Sebastian Dittrich, Ronja Hausmann, Daniel Kraus, Angelika Kölbl, Soumen Mallick, Giorgi Mamadashvili, Atle Mysterud, Kerstin Pierick, Rike Schwarz, Jörg Müller, Christian Ristok · 2026
Read Native earthworms and roe deer in temperate forests: Friends in the sun, foes in the shade by Ludwig Lettenmaier, Nico Eisenhauer, Simone Cesarz, Christian Ammer, Anna Bucharova, Sebastian Dittrich, Ronja Hausmann, Daniel Kraus, Angelika Kölbl, Soumen Mallick, Giorgi Mamadashvili, Atle Mysterud, Kerstin Pierick, Rike Schwarz, Jörg Müller, Christian Ristok (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13597149.txt.
Description
Ludwig Lettenmaier and a large team studied how roe deer and forest canopy gaps together shape native earthworm communities, in a 2026 paper. Deer numbers and canopy openness are both rising in European forests. Earthworms drive soil mixing and nutrient cycles, yet their response to deer had mostly been studied in North America with foreign worm species.
The team worked across seventy-five forest patches, some with fresh canopy gaps, each with fenced and open plots, five years after gap cutting. Under closed canopy, deer cut worm density and biomass. Where deer were absent, gaps alone changed little. Where deer browsed, gaps raised worm numbers, working through plant growth and moister soil. Young worms gained most from the deer effects. The pattern runs opposite to North American findings, a contrast the authors highlight for forest managers.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Ludwig Lettenmaier, Nico Eisenhauer, Simone Cesarz, Christian Ammer, Anna Bucharova, Sebastian Dittrich, Ronja Hausmann, Daniel Kraus, Angelika Kölbl, Soumen Mallick, Giorgi Mamadashvili, Atle Mysterud, Kerstin Pierick, Rike Schwarz, Jörg Müller, Christian Ristok |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 51 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |