These grey-colored creatures, also known as “rollie pollies” or woodlice, can be found in many dark, humid environments feeding on decaying matter. And actually, they are not even bugs. They are crustaceans and more closely resemble crabs and shrimp, not insects.
They are known by their capacity to fold up into a ball when they feel threatened. Another interesting element is that they have seven sets of legs. They likewise act like kangaroos, toting their eggs around with them in a unique pocket called a marsupium, situated on the pill bug’s underside. They don’t pee. Rather, they trade gases through gill-like structures.
Pill bugs are great for composting
Breeding or gathering pill bugs might be a practice for homesteading and gardening worth of your time. The guts of these pill bugs contain various microorganisms that assistance the critter feed on dead, organic matter. By discharging mass amounts of pill bugs into a garden, you can be guaranteed that dead plant matter is legitimately broken down and returned to healthy soil. Pill bugs truly accelerate the process of decomposition by circulating the soil. This can be exceptionally helpful in fertilizing the soil.
Pill bugs assume an essential job in the cycle of healthy vegetation. They return organic matter to the soil so it can be digested further by fungi, protozoans and bacteria. This process creates a natural supply of nitrates, phosphates and other fundamental supplements that plants need to flourish now and in future growing seasons. It is essential not to bring pill bugs into the garden too soon, as they will in general crunch on developing plants.
Pill bugs clean up soil and protect ground water from heavy metal contamination
One exceptionally interesting quality that these crustaceans have is their capacity to securely expel heavy metals from the soil. Thus, they are an essential apparatus for tidying up soil contaminated with poisons like lead, cadmium and arsenic. In coal spoils and slag heaps, pill bugs come in handy.
They take in heavy metals like lead and cadmium and crystallize these ions in their guts. The heavy metal poisons are then made into circular stores in the mid gut. With this unique cleanup property, pill bugs endure where most creatures can’t, in the most polluted areas.
The pill bug restores healthy soil and keeps poisonous metal particles from filtering into the groundwater. This implies that the pill bugs are additionally shielding well water from getting to be polluted while stabilizing soils.
1 thought on “‘Rollie Pollies’ Remove Heavy Metals From Soil, Stabilizing Growing Conditions”
Carole Barrett
(April 6, 2019 - 5:28 am)That’s great. Only problem is last year they kept eating my tomatoes, healthy growing tomatoes, still green, too small to harvest, growing on the vines. The horn worms kept attacking the leaves, the pill bugs and some type of catterpiller took turns eating the tomatoes. They killed 90% of my crop. I pulled horn worms three times a day from my 2 raised beds until I couldn’t see any more each time. Pulled off the damaged tomato fruits. Sprayed with pepper spray and soap and dusted with diatanaous (?) earth and still lost the battle.