That whole 'earthworm apocalypse' everyone was worried about in the UK? Turns out it was probably just a huge math error.
EcoEvoRxiv · March 16, 2026 · 10.32942/X2G669
Why it matters
A high-profile study recently warned that British earthworm populations were in a state of catastrophic decline, sparking widespread concern. However, this re-analysis found the original data was riddled with errors and omissions; when corrected, the evidence for a national collapse in earthworm numbers completely vanishes.
From the abstract
Declines in aboveground invertebrates have been reported widely but similar assessments belowground are rare. A recent quantitative study aimed to address this gap, presenting findings which suggested alarming long-term declines in earthworm abundance in the UK. Estimating temporal trends in abundance from diverse sources of data presents many challenges and there is a need for rigour toward inference. However, a comprehensive review of the published dataset revealed numerous issues including ex