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Tales from the Underground: A Natural History of Subterranean Life


by David Wolfe, David W. Wolfe

List Price: $18.00
Price: $14.40
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Sales Rank: 679019
Studio: Basic Books
Binding: Paperback
Number Of Pages: 240
Publication Date: December 31, 1969
Publisher: Basic Books


EDITORIAL REVIEWS

Product Description
There are over one billion organisms in a pinch of soil, and many of them perform functions essential to all life on the planet. Yet we know much more about deep space than about the universe below. In Tales from the Underground, Cornell ecologist David W. Wolfe lifts the veil on this hidden world, revealing for the first time what makes subterranean life so unique and so precious. Home to miniscule water bears and microscopic bacteria, mole rats and burrowing owls, the underground reigns supreme as it produces important pharmaceuticals, recycles life's essential elements, and helps plants gather nutrients. An original, awe-inspiring journey through a strange realm, Tales from the Underground will forever alter our appreciation of the natural world around-and beneath-us.

Amazon.com Review
Step into your backyard, David Wolfe suggests at the outset of this engaging book, and push your thumb and index finger into the root zone of a patch of grass. The pinch of soil you bring up will be a world of its own: "You will likely be holding," he writes, "close to one billion individual living organisms, perhaps ten thousand distinct species of microbes, most of them not yet named, catalogued, or understood."

Scientists are only beginning to comprehend the wealth of life that lies below the earth's surface, observes Wolfe, a soil scientist at Cornell University. Apart from familiar, easily observable subterranean creatures--earthworms, say, or prairie dogs--those scientists have found there progressively tinier forms of life, from "water bears" (tardigrades) and dust mites to microbes whose existence miles below the earth's surface provides keys to the origins of life itself. Noting that the total biomass below the surface may well exceed that above it, Wolfe takes his readers on a learned tour of the subsurface biosphere, layer by layer, mile by mile. What he reports is surprising, and oddly inspiring--for, Wolfe notes, although the human footprint on the soil is deep indeed, and getting deeper, plenty of life occurs beyond our reach.

"We know more about the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil underfoot," Leonardo da Vinci observed five hundred year ago. Wolfe's book helps diminish some of our ignorance, and it is a pleasure to be educated through the course of his pages. --Gregory McNamee



CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 11 reviews)

What's under your foot?  
A great deal, says David Wolfe. It's a busy place beneath your soles, and all that activity is more important than we realise. We should learn more about what's down there as part of our learning how the Earth works. Such an education might well be important to our own survival - both as individuals and as a species. What's underfoot is fundamental in more ways than one.

David Wolfe offers a brief guidebook to that realm in this well-written and fully researched account. His credentials as a soil ecologist provide the foundation for his examination of underground life. As the title implies, there are many stories down there, in both senses of the word. At the surface fresh soil is being created as you read. Deeper down are other, sometimes bizarre tales, which can provide hints to the origins of life. They might even offer evidence of the possibility of life on other planets, particularly Mars. If we find them, will "Martians" display radical forms or habits? A tough question since the life found deep in the Earth is more bizarre than dreamt of a couple of generations ago. Life far below the surface is dominated by "extremophiles" of one kind or another. Microbes that eat petroleum. Others that never see the sun and utilise energy in entirely novel ways. Still others that endure the extreme heat and limited consumables, resulting in a reduced pace in their lifestyle. Instead of reproducing in minutes as do the E. coli in your gut, these deep microbes may take years to generate a new individual.

Those deep-living microbes may have been the beginning of all life. Once started, life remained single-celled for two billion years. However, when cells joined for survival, some interesting combinations occurred. One of the more fascinating accounts in this book tells us about fungi. We generally think of mushrooms when "fungi" is mentioned. Mushrooms, however, are but surface indicators of much greater doings beneath the surface. Fungi may have helped establish the root systems of today's land plants over 450 million years ago. Over that immense stretch of time, there developed an intricate and intimate link between nearly all the trees in any given forest, irrespective of species. The soil under the forest floor is criss-crossed with a network of fungi busy sending nutrients and chemical signals among the stands of trees. It's fungi, of course, that provide the means for plants to obtain needed nitrogen from the atmosphere to make sugars for growth.

Other fungi aren't so kindly, at least as we're concerned. In recent years, a fungus attacking potatoe crops was partly controlled because it couldn't sustain itself in the soil. A new strain, arriving from the Mexican highlands granted an asexual species the ability to sexually reproduce. That quantum step along evolution's path gave the fungus the capacity to sustain itself longer in soil. More significantly, sexual reproduction introduced variants that resist pesticide sprays. Fungi can also infect humans and other animals. Fungi commonly reproduce by ejecting spores into the air. Breathed in, they invade the body causing a variety of flu-like symptoms. While few of these are fatal, children and the elderly, as always, are particularly vulnerable. Closer understanding of soil organisms has led to the development of pharmaceuticals such as streptomycine to combat diseases of many kinds.

Wolfe doesn't restrain his tale to nearly invisible organisms. He also discusses the great soil-builder, the earthworm, the topic of Charles Darwin's final volumes. Larger-sized still, another species faces extinction due to thoughtless human greed. For generations, even city kids learned of the "danger" Prairie Dogs posed to livestock. This myth led to even the federal government fostering extermination programmes. Prairie Dog colonies, which often covered vast areas, are now reduced to a few scattered locations. But it's not the Prairie Dog facing extinction, it's the Black-footed Ferret. The rodent is the ferret's sole food source, and reduced numbers and scattered habitat [which means the ferret must cross farms and roads] have tumbled the population.

Wolfe opens his book stating that his "goals are modest" and that this isn't a comprehensive study. Rightly so, since this is but an introduction to the topic. He's given what he promised in a sprightly presentation that should pique the interest of all. That busy realm is under threat in many ways, and it's up to us to understand something of its value. Take up this book and find out why you should learn about what's under your feet. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
October 15, 2006

left me not much smarter, but deeply saddened  
All the great reviews, misled me to expect not only a very readable but also a highly informative text. I was disappointed. The book skips across the vast subject, presenting only an interesting morsel here and there. It tells you a little bit about earth worms, a little bit about extremophiles, and a little about the symbiotic relationship between plants and fungi. All that does not add up to a comprehensive picture of the ground beneath our feet. It is, and I guess the title says that too, a collection of tales, and well-told tales they are. The final one about the war of extinction against ground-dwelling creatures in the US is truelly harrowing. All in all "Tales from the Underground" did little to educate me, but a lot to make very sad about the destruction humanity is visiting on this planet. What a dumb and brutal creature man is.
August 04, 2005

Underappreciated Life in the Soil  
Soil organisms seldom get their due. Despite the fact that we gain our food directly or indirectly from the soil, few people think much about what exists between the soil particles. In fact the soil is so full of living things that it could almost be considered to be alive itself. If an alien spacecraft landed on almost any soil surface on earth it would find recognizable life processes without much trouble, but then our planet may be a bit weird (at least as weird as Mars or Saturn's moon Titan!).

David W. Wolfe has presented a very readable and fascinating view of the soil and its biota in his book "Tales from the Underground." From soil microorganisms (some not so "friendly") through earthworms to prairie dogs, the reader it treated to a broad panorama of life. It is now suspected that the number of species in the soil (and even into the rocky crust) may be larger than for that on the surface. E. O. Wilson has said that if he were to have another career it would be in the ecology of the microorganisms in tropical soils, and I think he is on to something.

Sadly, there are relatively few soil biologists. Specialists in, for example, earthworms (creatures that as Darwin noted are largely responsible for the development of humus in the temperate parts of the world), are few and far between as noted by Ehrenfeld in his book "Beginning Again." Yet our crops, and thus our very life on this planet, depend on such soil-forming organisms.

I once visited a citrus grove in Florida where nearly every chlorinated hydrocarbon known to man had been used against the ever present insect pests. It was a spooky place. The soil itself could be used as a pesticide and there were, as far as I could ascertain, no ants or spiders. While I was there I heard no birds singing. All of these observations were certainly odd as in every other grove I had ever visited both ants and spiders were common and bird song could be heard periodically. The only living creatures I found were earwigs! Thousands of them existed under the leaf litter. Apparently resistant to the DDT, chlordane, toxophene, aldrin and dialdrin that had been used on the grove, they had proliferated beyond belief. Human activities such as this, as noted by Wolfe, need to be mitigated if we are to have a sustainable society. We cannot think of nature as something to conquer. His last chapter "The Good Earth" should be read by anyone who has a stake in solving the problems that may lead to our demise as a species- and that means all of us! Still Wolfe points out that we have to be "conditional optimists" to progress. Pessimistic despair will get us nowhere and "pathological optimism" has gotten us to this point. Perhaps it is a time for moderation in our thinking, while knowing that we may have to make some drastic changes in our attitudes to get anywhere! It is certainly unfortunate that several current governments are still in the "pathological optimism" mode, but then facing unpleasant facts is always hard! However, many national and international corporations, the World Bank and a number of insurance agencies are taking the threat seriously. After all they will certainly be affected by such drastic changes that may be in the offing. They cannot afford the head-in-the-sand thinking that politicians seem to need to get re-elected.

Read this book- it will change your attitude about the dirt we walk on and from which we probably originated!
April 03, 2005

Great introduction to subterranean life  
_Tales from the Underground_ by David W. Wolfe is an excellent though rather brief introduction to the organisms that live underground; it is only 188 pages long, 206 if one count's the end notes and bibliography (which are quite worthwhile to at least browse). One of the things I liked about the book was that Wolfe was clearly enthusiastic about his subject and expressed a real sense of wonder for the fascinating organisms that dwell under the earth's surface.

He began the book with a nice overall introduction to the subject, more than sufficient to grab my attention. In one just pinch of soil from your backyard, you will be holding close to one billion individual living organisms, including quite a few that are not named, classified, or in any way studied, animals ranging in size from the tiniest of microbes to microscopic threads of fungal hyphae, the total length of which might be best measured in miles, not inches. In a handful of soil there are more creatures than humans currently alive. A typical square yard of soil contains billions of microscopic roundworms called nematodes, a dozen to several hundred earthworms, 100,000 to 500,000 insects and other arthropods, and staggering numbers of single-celled organisms. After reviewing some basics about soil layers and types, he went into more detail about this subterranean world.

The first chapter discussed the origins of life on earth, much of which had to do with life in the soil. The complex structure and chemistry of clay crystals may have played a vital role in the development of life, perhaps initially serving as the "infrastructure" of the first, most primitive organisms, this infrastructure eventually being discarded as more and more organic molecules such as those in amino and nucleic acids took over clay's replication and synthesis functions. According to some theorists clay made possible the very first sequencing of simple proteins and genes thanks to its unique properties.

Chapter two introduced the "extremophiles," organisms that live in hostile environments, many of which exist in subterranean conditions. Some organisms "breathe in" iron oxide (rust) as a substitute for oxygen, while others are able to incorporate cobalt and even uranium into their biological processes. Much of the chapter gave the history of the study of extremophiles, as biologists continually had to revise their notions of what life could tolerate as they found organisms living at ever higher temperatures and depths (with organism at 9,000 foot depths and at temperatures higher than 160 degrees Fahrenheit having been discovered). Of further interest, these organisms may be the most common in the world, with some calculations showing that their total biomass exceeds that of all surface life. Study of one group, lithotrophic microbes, which live buried in basalt rock deep beneath the surface, has been vital in the search for life on other planets.

Chapter three focused primarily on Dr. Carl Woese of the University of Illinois, a researcher who discovered an entire new microbial superkingdom of organisms, the Archaea, a finding that radically changed how the various kingdoms of organisms were classified, a discovery that was highly controversial, as he changed the tree of life from one based primarily on visual characteristics to one based on his molecular approach. Woese found that a number of organisms assumed to be bacteria were something entirely different, as different from bacteria at least as plants are from animals. In the end the new tree of life consists of three superkingdoms or domains, Bacteria, Archaea (which includes many extremophiles), and Eukarya (which encompasses plants, animals, fungi, and protozoa).

Chapter four emphasized the importance of "nitrogen-fixers," a small group of bacteria and archaea that are able to convert nitrogen gas in the atmosphere into a form the rest of life on earth can use, a biological innovation every bit as important as the advent of photosynthesis to the history of life on earth. Wolfe showed the rather intricate symbiosis between nitrogen-fixers and plants as well their complex biology. He also discussed the role of denitrifiers, organisms that aid in the recycling of nitrogen on earth as they are able to convert soil nitrates back into atmospheric nitrogen.

Chapter five dealt with the equally important symbiosis between plants and highly specialized underground fungi, vital in enabling plants to obtain water and nutrients from the soil (and occasionally other plants). More than 90% of the higher plants on the planet today benefit from their association with the delicate threadlike hyphae in their roots, a group known as mycorrhizal fungus. Wolfed discussed the two types, arbuscular mycorrhizae (so named because their unique branching, tree-shaped hyphal structures) and the ectomycorrhizae, both of which are the foundation of most terrestrial ecosystems.

Chapter six dealt with earthworms, much of it providing information and anecdotes about Charles Darwin's decades long study of them. Also vital to ecosystems, they act as biological blenders, fragmenting plant debris and mixing it with the soil and living and dead microbial biomass, creating more surface area for further production of humus.

The next chapter discussed some of the good and bad effects on human health of soil organisms. The passages on the soil-borne pathogen _Clostridium tetani_, the cause of tetanus, made for chilling reading. Wolfe also related information about the fungus-like _Phytopthora infestans_, which causes potato late blight, source of the 1840s potato famine in Ireland (and a disease that may be making a comeback). Soil organisms have also done a lot of good; the root fungus _Trichoderma harzianum_ targets a variety of disease-causing soil microbes, and working in the 1940s soil biologist Dr. Selman Waksman discovered a number of potent antibiotics from soil bacteria.

Chapter eight was quite interesting, dealing with the interesting life history and often tragic human history of three animals, the prairie dog, black-footed ferret, and burrowing owl.

The final chapter dealt with the primary threats to soil ecology, notably soil erosion, toxic waste, and climatic change (both acid rain and global warming).

A great introduction to subterranean life, worthwhile reading.

December 13, 2004

Examines unexplored terrain  
This natural history of subterranean life examines unexplored terrain and its unique and varied habitats, from microscopic life to small water bears. Particularly intriguing are the links made between subterranean life and its potentials for assisting mankind.
August 08, 2002
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