New records of earthworms (Clitellata: Oligochaeta) from Georgia, USA, including eight new state records.

We present here new county records for 13 counties within Georgia, USA from the collections of the Georgia Museum of Natural History and the authors. These include four families, eight genera, and 23 species. Of these, eight species are new state records: Amynthas carnosus (Goto & Hatai, 1899); Aporrectodea longa (Ude, 1885); Bimastos parvus (Eisen, 1874); Diplocardia deborahae Damoff & Reynolds, 2017; Diplocardia gatesi Murchie, 1965; Diplocardia michaelseni Eisen, 1899; Metaphire hilgendorfi (Michaelsen, 1892); and Murchieona minuscula (Rosa, 1906).

Aqueous Photolysis of Water-Soluble Brown Carbon from Simulated Prescribed and Wildfire Biomass Burning.

This work, as part of the Georgia Wildland fire Simulation Experiment (G-WISE) campaign, explores the aqueous photolysis of water-soluble brown carbon (W-BrC) in biomass burning aerosols from the combustion of fuel beds collected from three distinct ecoregions in Georgia: Piedmont, Coastal Plain, and Blue Ridge. Burns were conducted under conditions representative of wildfires, which are common unplanned occurrences in Southeastern forests (low fuel moisture content), and prescribed fires, which are commonly used in forest management (higher fuel moisture content). Upon exposure to radiation from UV lamps equivalent to approximately 5 h in the atmosphere, the absorption spectra of all six samples exhibited up to 40% photobleaching in the UV range (280-400 nm) and as much as 30% photo-enhancement in the visible range (400-500 nm).

Gut microbial communities and their potential roles in cellulose digestion and thermal adaptation of earthworms.

Adaptations to temperature and food resources, which can be affected by gut microbiota, are two main adaptive strategies allowing soil fauna to survive in their habitats, especially for cold-blooded animals. Earthworms are often referred to as ecosystem engineers because they make up the biggest component of the animal biomass found in the soil. They are considered as an important indicator in the triangle of soil quality, health and functions.

Two new species of Bimastos (Oligochaeta, Lumbricidae) from the Southern Appalachian Mountains, North America.

Two new species of Bimastos Moore are described based on morphological and molecular data. Bimastos nanae n. sp.

Observations on an epilobic Lumbricus rubellus (Oligochaeta, Lumbricidae) from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee, USA.

The genus Lumbricus L. was the first described genus of earthworms, with L. terrestris as its type species.

Deep Ion Torrent sequencing identifies soil fungal community shifts after frequent prescribed fires in a southeastern US forest ecosystem.

Prescribed burning is a common management tool to control fuel loads, ground vegetation, and facilitate desirable game species. We evaluated soil fungal community responses to long-term prescribed fire treatments in a loblolly pine forest on the Piedmont of Georgia and utilized deep Internal Transcribed Spacer Region 1 (ITS1) amplicon sequencing afforded by the recent Ion Torrent Personal Genome Machine (PGM). These deep sequence data (19,000 + reads per sample after subsampling) indicate that frequent fires (3-year fire interval) shift soil fungus communities, whereas infrequent fires (6-year fire interval) permit system resetting to a state similar to that without prescribed fire.

Interactions among overstory structure, seedling life-history traits, and fire in frequently burned neotropical pine forests.

Fire-dependent pine forests in the Caribbean Basin cover extensive areas in the coastal plain of the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico and on several islands in the Bahamas Archipelago, Cuba, Hispaniola, and the Honduran Bay islands. These forests are high in conservation value but, unfortunately, remain mostly unprotected. Moreover, even though they are fire dependent, the use of fire for forest management often suffers from poor public perception and is prohibited by law in several countries.

Effects of earthworm (Eisenia fetida) and wheat (Triticum aestivum) straw additions on selected properties of petroleum-contaminated soils.

Current bioremediation techniques for petroleum-contaminated soils are designed to remove contaminants as quickly and efficiently as possible, but not necessarily with postremediation soil biological quality as a primary objective. To test a simple postbioremediation technique, we added earthworms (Eisenia fetida) or wheat (Triticum aestivum) straw to petroleum land-farm soil and measured biological quality of the soil as responses in plant growth, soil respiration, and oil and grease (O&G) and total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) concentrations. Results indicated that plant growth was greater in earthworm-treated land-farm soil.