I recently found an old photo on my phone of a stream near my high school. One of my most memorable experiences with this stream was stuffing a netted bag full of dead leaves and leaving the bag in the stream for a week. When I returned the bag was full of minute creatures who had it made it a home for themselves, creatures we typically don’t get to see because of the fast moving water.
yep, those little “leaf-shredders” are an important step in the carbon and nutrient cycle of streams and rivers (the movement of C and N in the atmos, to uptake by plants, to animals, and eventually to inorganic carbon in soils and rocks). Who knew?