Long live the creepy-crawlies, the bugs, the tiny wigglers and
wrigglers, the minuscule parasites and nematodes, the mites and
oribatids and all the myriad life forms that buzz, crawl and
throb below our feet. Most have barely been given a second
thought by science, but biologists now think that these mostly
named creatures make up the beating heart of the biosphere and
that the fate of all life may depend on the wellbeing of their
fragile worlds. Thanks to photographer David Liittschwager, we
now have a visual inkling of what exactly lives high in the
cloud forest canopy, below our feet in the parks, in the
sediments of rivers and on coral reefs. Liittschwager, primarily
a portrait photographer, had the idea of taking a one-cubic-foot
metal frame and recording what moved through this habitat over a
day and night. He then made portraits of the life that could be
seen with the naked eye. What was found even in fairly
nondescript places was wondrous. When the metal frame was
dropped in the Duck River in Tenness