Leaf litter is just what it sounds like. All the leaves and stuff that falls from the trees and bushes and makes up that sometimes crunchy, sometimes soft forest floor covering. Unlike the litter that people make, forest litter is beautiful to look at, wonderful to smell and enchanting to hear.

Each forest ecosystem produces a characteristic litter. The arthropods and other little critters that make the litter their home can be fussy about where they hang out. Some like the top layer with all the light and air and space. Others prefer to keep a lower profile by making their home in the bottom, denser layer.

If you could take a deep layer cake slice of forest floor, the litter would be the icing.

This illustration from Robert leo Smith's Ecology and Field Biology textbook shows you what to expect.

The layers this workshop is interested in are marked "O1" and "O2". "O1" is the loose, organic top layer while "O2" is partly decomposed or matted down at least.

I am not going to explain what all the soil layers are, but you should know that "A1" is the layer most filled with organic matter mixed with minerals. All the good food stuff plants need tends to be up here and in the other two "A" layers.

How do the big leaves and twigs and bits and pieces turn from a crispy top layer into the fine organic matter and minerals the plants need? This is the story our workshop was designed to tell.

However, you have to discover the different chapters of the story by examining the litter and then thinking and reading about what is going on!

First, you are going to find out what is living in that litter!
Put on your science and hunter hats to follow these links.

The question we are trying to answer first is:

Which habitat has the highest population of invertebrates?

• pine forest
• oak forest
• red maple low lands
• open fields

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GO TO the next page to get started
or
read a bit more below if you aren't sure what an invertebrate is,
or
take a look at this page by a Scot that gives an overview of a woodland ecosystem.
It has the delightful name of "Oot and Aboot by Geordie Pride"!

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Invertebrate means without a back bone. What is the smallest animal you can name that HAS a backbone like you do? What is the largest?

Now, what is the smallest invertebrate you can think of? What is the largest you know of?

If you want to know more about insects (which are one kind of invertebrate)...... the biggest, smallest, most poisonous, best to eat and all that sort of thing......
.......go to the Book of Insect Records site at the Department of Entomology & Nematology University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida !

Below are some insects which are invertebrates. What they have in common is no skeleton! Instead they have an exoskeleton...(exo means outside,outer)...in the form of a firm or armor-like body wall. While we have our muscles attached to our stiff bones inside us, arthropods have their muscles attached to their stiff exoskeleton on their outside.

All insects are arthropods. All arthropods are NOT insects. Spiders and ticks are arthropods, but they are not insects, for example.

Want to do an online jigsaw puzzle of this block of stamps while you relax from a hard morning identifying your litter inverts? Expand your horizons, get an idea of all the stamps issued around the world with insect themes!

(from Linn's Stamp News): Read how a person interested in both art and science combines them in a career that gives great satisfaction! More info and picturesat the Linn site.

"The remarkably detailed illustrations for the Insects & Spiders stamps were created on computer by artist Steve Buchanan of Winsted, Conn.

Buchanan uses a digitizing tablet and stylus as a painting tool to create the artwork, which he views in progress on his computer monitor.
In a telephone interview with Linn's Stamp News, Buchanan described the digitizing tablet as a pressure-sensitive flat plastic pad with a working area about one-foot square.
The artist sketches using the tablet in a manner similar to using a pencil, brush or charcoal."

"Buchanan studied each depicted bug under a microscope, using preserved examples supplied by the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station and the Smithsonian Institution.
Reflections of light on each subject and carefully placed pale shadows beneath them add to the great realism of the designs."