Researchers have been crawling around on hands and knees in regional Victoria's Strathbogie Ranges for the past four years in search of a microscopic solution to a significant problem.
Landcare facilitator Janet Hagen said she had seen a trend where farmers who started reintroducing habitat on cleared land decades ago had hit a stumbling block.
Mature trees in revegetation projects were dropping seed, but young plants weren't appearing in their wake.
"There seems to be something missing in that link. They produce a lot of seed but they aren't germinating," Ms Hagen said.
"The farmers that planted those trees 20 years ago didn't expect to be re-planting them to keep the vegetation happening.
"They thought, 'once we've planted them it'll just take off, it'll be self-sustaining and it'll keep growing like normal bush'."
Solutions from the ground up
That was where La Trobe University PhD candidate Peter Contos and his colleagues came in.
They have been conducting leaf litter transplants on livestock farms round Ruffy, where land owners have "really patchy and quite isolated" revegetation.
The transplants involved taking leaf litter from biologically rich sites such as national parks and spreading it on revegetation sites near Ruffy.
Hidden amongst the leaves were invertebrates — diverse insect communities that researchers said were the missing ingredient when it came to the long-term success of tree planting projects.
"They're the backbone of a really healthy, functioning ecosystem," Mr Contos said.
"[The term invertebrates] covers a really broad spectrum of groups, some things people probably have never even seen in their life and never will unless they actually get a microscope out."
Creepy crawlies in the limelight
Leaf litter critters break down organic matter and return it back to the earth, improving soil quality.
"Invertebrates are paramount to human existence," Mr Contos said.
"Without them crop pollination would suffer and soils would degrade, which is why there needs to be a lot more effort focussing on improving invertebrate populations, making sure in the future they won't go extinct."
But Mr Contos said the importance of invertebrates such as worms, spiders, beetles, cockroaches and mites was often overlooked.
"Invertebrates make up 97 per cent of all animal life but they're only the focus of three per cent of reintroduction projects," he said.
"There's a really big bias towards the things that we might naturally find appealing — something like a mammal, something that's cute and cuddly."
Increasing species diversity
Some of the insects find it easy to transition to a new habitat and some don't survive the truck ride.
Mr Contos said beetles were the most successful at adapting to a new environment.
"We know for a fact we were able to increase beetle diversity," he said.
Mr Contos said he hoped to see leaf litter transplants used more widely, as a cheap, straightforward way to boost habitat renewal.
"It's intuitive and easy to do which we think is one of the main benefits of invertebrate re-wilding," he said.
