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marine nematologist there were 10,000 plant nematologists and about
1,000 animal parasitologists, for commercial reasons. Nematocides were a
big business. Nematodes were difficult to wipe out, they destroyed crops,
killed animals and made people ill. The free-living ones did no harm; a
person consumed hundreds per day, from tap water. Their ecological
importance was unknown, but they must be important because numerically
they constituted a huge wedge of biomass and the many things that fed at
the surface of sediment were presumably feeding on nematodes. They
were probably important in transferring energy out the system by feeding on
bacteria and just about anything else. Some were predators, while many
fed on bacteria, protists, foraminiferans or diatoms. It was thought that
they helped in the breakdown of organic material because they scavenged
into dead macrofauna and sometimes did not wait for an animal to die
before feeding on it. Some of them released enzymes that broke down the
organic material and some fed directly on the dissolved organic material.
They probably kept bacteria in the growing phase because they were
resistant to pollution, and they probably helped to dissipate oil and sewage.
At the sewage-sludge dumping grounds off Britain, big shallow-water
nematodes feeding on dissolved organics were so abundant they could be
picked up in clumps the size of cricket balls; they were presumably
converting sewage into biomass.
Nematodes did a lot of harm to people. They caused massive
diseases in the tropics, and attacked animals and plants. The free-living
ones, however, were on the side of the angels because they were important
in keeping bacteria growing on organic material, breaking down organic
material, keeping bacteria in the growth phase and generally passing
organic material up through the food chain. Juvenile fish fed on them, in
some cases coming along a beach and blowing on the sand to get the
nematodes into the water column where they were helpless. Thus, they
probably occupied an important intermediate position in the food chain.
Bioprospecting
Asked whether anyone was looking for useful genes amidst the
diversity of nematodes, Lambshead said this was not happening now. His
group had been approached by a consortium with a laboratory in southern
Florida that was engaged in bioprospecting but the big problem had to do
with who owned biodiversity. The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew (London)
had almost ended up in international court after starting to bioprospect in
their living collections from various countries, when the Brazilian
Government called for a halt, saying it owned the genes in Brazilian plants.
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