Plants’ ‘don’t-eat-me’ chemicals no problem for earthworms
Newly discovered gut compounds let the decomposers do what they do best with leaf litter
SELF-DEFENSE Using cross sections of earthworms, researchers discovered in the gut a group of compounds called drilodefensins that foil hazardous plant chemicals. The colored scale shows relative abundance of the drilodefensins in the worm.
M. Liebeke et al/Nature Communications 2015