Worms Help To Control Slugs

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Unknown_slug_on_rhubarb.jpg

We are all aware of the benefits that earthworms offer.  Nutrient availability, aeration, nutrient cycling, microbe diversity, water infiltration, retention, and drainage, the list goes on and on.  It appears that earthworms also have a profound affect on slug populations and possibly other pest species as well.

The presence of earthworms causes plants to uptake nitrogen compounds which are toxic to slugs.  A controlled study shows that slugs can be reduced up to 60% in plots with healthy worm populations.  Combined with various degrees of increased plant diversity, the slug population can be decreased an additional 40% beyond this.  This one-two punch can result in an overall reduction in slugs of close to 80%.

If you want additional slug control, a diverse ecosystem will provide predators such as snakes and lizards.  Ducks have been known to be incredible at pest control in additional to their many other benefits.  Frogs, centipedes, beetles, birds and a myriad of other species can help to further suppress slug numbers to the point that they are more of a curiosity than a nuisance.

This just continues to highlight the fact that a stable and diverse ecosystems-based approach provides free natural protection with minimal inputs.  Healthy invertebrate populations serve to balance out predator/prey, parasitic, mutually inclusive/exclusive and symbiotic relationships.  There is no reason to think that this type of dynamic is not happening all throughout any complex food web.

Systems will never be perfect and some losses will occur.  But in addition to increasing (rather than decreasing fertility over time) the amount of labor and input saved will far outweigh any losses.  In the end it will end this is the best, most viable option for land management.  The increasing fertility of an ecology-based approach will end up increasing yields in the long term as well as the value of the land.

http://phys.org/news/2013-05-invasion-slugshalted-worms.html