That roundworm aerates the soil and is critical for the health of plants you’re eating as well. It’s also a proxy for nervous system reactions.
But the dangers of it affecting other animals' nervous systems the same way it affects roundworms is a serious worry.
There are a few things that if they were lost globally would greatly affect the necessary process of decomposition.
A lot of what's written about c. elegans environment has been overturned. It was thought to be a soil nematode, but it's really most common in rotting fruit.
The animals cited in this study are roundworms and belong to the Filum Nematoda, one of the most frequent animals in this planet and also one of the most overlooked.
Most of them are not parasite animals, but we know more about the parasites because they cause gross diseases in humans.
Earthworms are the common pink worms found on soil, they belong to Filum Annelida (and is true that some european earthworms invaded America a few thousands years ago).
Earthworms and humans are basically not directly linked in the trophic chain. We don't feed on them, and they don't feed on us directly or cause us diseases.
Which makes the practice above of spraying replanted forests so “the good trees grow faster” even more abhorrent
They replant with round-up ready pine, so they spray to kill aspen which is a firebreak species, and grow massive pine stands which are the opposite. It's the major reason for the massive forest fires we've had lately (and thus the massive flooding).
It is also a powerful chelating agent (make you lose minerals) is another concern for humans.
"Although the chelating properties are well known, this potential additional environmental risk was never adequately considered in the regulatory risk assessment (EFSA 2015a, 2015b)."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5823954/#:~:tex....
>The half-life of glyphosate in soil ranges between 2 and 197 days; a typical field half-life of 47 days has been suggested. Soil and climate conditions affect glyphosate's persistence in soil. The median half-life of glyphosate in water varies from a few to 91 days.[57] At a site in Texas, half-life was as little as three days. A site in Iowa had a half-life of 141.9 days