Soil may actively drive evolution, naturalists argue
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In 2010, soil scientist Augusto Zanella of the University of Padua and botanist Sandro Pignatti discussed the role of soil in evolution while examining a soil profile at the Presidential Estate of Castelporziano near Rome, Italy.
Their conversation, documented in Italian Botanist, questioned whether soil is simply a setting for life or an active force in it. They observed that natural landscapes often defy neat scientific classification due to the chaotic influence of living organisms.
The two naturalists agreed that mapping plant communities is difficult because characteristic plant species are often scarce where boundaries between landscapes are indistinct. They proposed that plant communities are evolving entities that communicate to survive, but are hard to define spatially. They theorized that ecosystems should be understood as indivisible units, and that human activity has disrupted natural evolutionary processes.
Zanella and Pignatti further proposed that soil functions as a “double soil”, one within plants and another within animal digestive systems, both transforming dead organic matter into resources for new life. Pignatti suggested that fragments of DNA could be transferred between generations outside of reproduction, potentially explaining co-evolution and the presence of foreign DNA within organisms. They even speculated that reproduction itself might be a form of cell death and recycling, mirroring the soil’s processes at a cellular level.
Research supports their ideas, showing that soil microorganisms can be highly interconnected and that biodiversity loss through human activity destroys complex webs of interdependence.
