Can you count?

Never fond of maths, I find multiplication is staggeringly good fun with microbes. If I can see 10 nutrient pooping protozoa in one gaze down the microscope, I can quickly multiply up… to know that that means there is over 81,000 in just one mg of that vibrant compost I have had evolving nicely. 

I have a little challenge with myself (ok, bit sad!) to see how many nematodes I can have dancing in one view down the microscope… I’m expecting my number to go up shortly so will hold back for now on disclosing it. 

Nematodes, as well as protists, poop out amazingly nutritious solids. There's not nearly as many of these, so counting is much easier...but the poo is even richer in minerals.

These guys are just some of the microbes underpinning all ecology with their pulse of nutrition; that’s all ecology, both below and above ground, that depend on them.

In fact, all life depends on microbes - a fact that has been hidden for so long, they are so small after all. So tiny that, even once seen, it was hard to accept that they even had a part to play. Though some astute minds - even some way back - guessed there was a life force in soil. 

That force comes back to the numbers, if you have a trillion bacteria in one teaspoon of soil, acting in cohesion and harmony to provide for each others’ needs and to produce a cyclical and perpetual function … the number is really just one. 

One microbiome each for everything bigger than a microbe. 

One ecosystem for all the participants, big and small.

Now that’s a pretty easy number.