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Rotting Logs
Nature Bulletin No. 55 March 2, 1946
Forest Preserve District of Cook County
Clayton F. Smith, President
Roberts Mann, Superintendent of Conservation
ROTTING LOGS
There is drama in a rotting log. Apparently lifeless and useless there on
the ground, it harbors thousands of living things within and beneath it.
Feeding on the wood of the log, living and dying, generation after
generation of them, they convert it back into minerals which a fertile
healthy forest soil must have. They also add the humus which not only
helps the soil to hold its moisture but also aids in making the soil
minerals usable as food by plants, including trees. Finally there is
nothing left but crumbling punk shot through and through with the
hyphae, or roots, of molds and mushrooms. Some of the common lower
plant and animal forms found in a rotting log in our forest preserves are
these.
- Bacteria
- protozoa
- millipedes
- molds
- round worms (nematodes)
- roaches
- fungi (mushrooms)
- land snails and slugs
- crickets
- lichens
- earthworms
- fly larvae (maggots)
- mosses
- bugs
- beetle larvae
- centipedes
- beetle
There is an interesting story in the way each of these plants and animals
attacks the rotting log. The boring beetles, for instance, chew up the
wood but the digestion is done by hosts of microscopic animals
(protozoa) packed in their intestines. Earthworms have ferments in their
saliva which convert the woody substances into sugar.
Dead and dying trees, while they stand, furnish homes for many
mammals and birds such as bats, squirrels, raccoons, possums, wrens,
bluebirds, woodpeckers, wood ducks and owls. They furnish food for
many of these. When they fall and lie there rotting they furnish homes
and food for many other mammals, snakes and insects -- winter and
summer.
They play a vital part in encriching the soil, keeping it fertile and
maintaining the abundant variety of life to be found in our natural
forest.
Woodsman, spare that dead tree !
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Update: June 2012
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