As others have observed--Darwin's Black Box--the famous evolutionist could get away with guessing about activities at the microscopic level, because he could not see them at work. A very good optical microscope at the time could barely see a bacterium - 500,000 fit on the period at the end of this sentence.
We can use scanning electron microscopes to see structures and to spoof the real image by assigning colors to each component. The complexity grows at the microscopic level. I read the book passages over and over to grasp all that is going on with chemical exchanges, protozoa, bacteria, fungi, algae, and nematodes: Teaming with Nutrients, Teaming with Microbes.
The next level of activity is gigantic in comparison - sowbugs, pillbugs, spiders, ants, and earthworms. On that level, they are like humans eating from the garden, so great is the size differential.
The health of the soil determines the productivity of the plants, and the health of the plants determines our own health. I have large and small pole beans hanging from skinny looking vines, but they have have soaked up sun and mined the soil to turn light and chemicals into complex carbohydrates while fixing nitrogen in the soil. We know the fungus needed for that to happen at the root level. The fungus swaps nitrogen for carbon.
I said to Mrs. I - "Look at those giant bean pods." I keep pulling them off the vines, and they keep producing. We have about three weeks of growing weather left. The tomatoes have almost quit but have not frosted. The pumpkins only had enough time to establish a canopy of vines across the lawn and on top of the chain-link fence. They needed more time for pumpkin production.
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| Amanita muscaria |
A fungal hypha is considerably larger than a bacterium, the average length being 2 to 15 micrometers with a diameter of 0.2 to 3.5 micrometers— still so thin that it takes hundreds of thousands of individual hyphal strands to form a network thick enough for the human eye to see. A teaspoon of good garden soil may contain several yards of fungal hyphae, invisible to the naked eye; millions upon millions merge together to produce something as obvious as a king bolete or an intricate Amanita muscaria in all their fruiting glory. These and other mushrooms are simply the fruiting bodies of fungi. Consider the energy and nutrients required to produce them.
Lewis, Wayne; Lowenfels, Jeff, (2010-09-10). Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web, Revised Edition (Kindle Locations 840-844). Timber Press. Kindle Edition.
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