The living habits of earthworms

Earthworms have the characteristics of being warm, wet, dark, quiet, afraid of light, salt, spicy, herbivorous, burrowing and so on. Earthworms are generally sexually mature at the age of 4-6 months, and mating can be carried out at night after sexual maturity. During mating, the two earthworms are inverted back and forth, the ventral sides are close to each other, and the sperm are put into each other's fertilization sac. at the same time, the eggs are excreted from the female pore of the earthworm and combine with the allogeneic sperm in the seminal vesicle. The fertilized eggs are incubated in the worm cocoon, and the hatching time is related to the species and temperature, ranging from more than 10 days to more than one month. It can lay eggs 3-4 times a year, and the suitable breeding temperature is 15-27 ℃. The peak seasons of earthworm breeding are from March to July and from September to November.

Thermophile

Earthworms like to live in a warm environment, and their body temperature changes with the temperature of the external environment. Therefore, earthworms are significantly dependent on the environment. Environmental temperature not only directly affects the body temperature and activity of earthworms, but also affects the metabolism, growth, development and reproduction of earthworms, and temperature has a great influence on other living conditions. Thus indirectly affect the growth of earthworms. The survival temperature of earthworms is 0: 40 ℃, in which earthworms dormant at 0: 5 ℃, the optimum temperature for growth is between 8-30 ℃, the most suitable temperature for growth and reproduction is 15-27 ℃, and the growth stops above 32 ℃. There are some differences due to different species.

Hygrophilic

Earthworms like to live in moist soil. In the absence of specialized respiratory organs, oxygen in the air must first be dissolved in the water on the body surface and then diffused into the capillaries of the body wall; carbon dioxide produced by breathing is discharged into the air through the opposite process, so the body must remain moist in order to breathe normally. If the body of an earthworm is dry, it will soon suffocate to death because it cannot breathe normally. However, too much humidity is disadvantageous to the respiration of earthworms, and earthworms in the soil soaked or submerged by water often escape. The humidity range of earthworm living environment is 10%-70%, and the suitable humidity is 60%-70%. With different types, the requirements for humidity are different.

Cave dwelling

Earthworms live in the ground all their lives and generally live in soil at a depth of 10 to 20 centimeters. Like wet, loose and humus-rich soil, especially fertile courtyards, vegetable gardens and rural pig houses, cattle barns near garbage dumps, under stones and so on. The ventilation of the soil is better, on the one hand, it can promote the metabolism of earthworms, on the other hand, it is not easy to produce harmful gases such as hydrogen sulfide and methane. Earthworms are very sensitive to soil acidity and alkalinity and can not survive in the environment of strong acid and alkali. The suitable range of soil pH is 6-8.

Light aversion

Earthworms are nocturnal animals, very sensitive to light, like dark, afraid of strong light, normally lying in the cave during the day, digging, feeding, mating and other activities at night. When artificial breeding, it is necessary to build a shed above the breeding pond to shade the light to prevent direct sunlight.

Herbivore

Under natural conditions, earthworms are mainly plant-eating omnivores, which like to swallow decaying leaves, withered grass, vegetable debris, crop straw, livestock manure, melon peel and waste from food factories, as well as domestic waste. Especially like to eat sweet foods, such as rotten fruit, also like to eat sour food, but do not like to eat bitter and tannin-smelling food. Earthworms inhabit the soil longitudinally and feed head down, while feces accumulate on the ground. The effect of food on earthworms is shown not only in the quantity of food, but also in the quality of food. Earthworms that feed on animal manure grow faster, and the number of cocoons produced by earthworms is several to 10 times more than that of the same kind of earthworms fed on plant fodder. it shows that the effect of cultivating earthworms with rotten or fermented organic feed from animals is better than that of plant-based organic feed.

Living environment and natural enemies

Earthworms like a quiet environment, afraid of noise and vibration. The natural enemies of earthworms include predatory natural enemies and parasitic natural enemies. Predatory natural enemies include a variety of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, arthropods, annelids, and parasitic natural enemies include tapeworms, nematodes, parasitic flies, mites and so on. In the breeding of earthworms, it is necessary to create a quiet living environment to prevent the invasion of natural enemies.