Well, I found out an answer to a question I just posted in the pepper thread today about how fungus gnats are harmful to plants. It said that the larvae, after feeding on the root-hairs, proceed to then consume the roots and even feed on the stem.
Since some of the micro-arthropods feed on bacteria and fungi (and nematodes and protozoa
), I'm thinking that they really release a lot of nutrients since they probably consume a high volume of organisms to begin with.
However, it said on page 92 "Since most arthropods are food for still larger animals, the total distances microbes can be moved(consider a bacteria colony eaten by a grub that is ingested by a robin) can be truly great." So, it seems like some arthropods release nutrients when they eat the microbes (implying this digestion kills the microbes), but others do not (implying the microbes survive digestion and reside inside the host). In this latter instance, when do the microbes release nutrition into the soil, when the host arthropod is eaten? But the sentence still implies that the robin eating the arthropod still keeps the microbes alive as it helps to transport them even further. Perhaps these arthropods really do not release the nutrients, they just release the bacteria back into the soil when the host arthropod dies. Interesting stuff.
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