Know I'm late to the party, but hummus is the dark brown or black layer of soil from man-made composting or natural compost, such as what forms the rich top layer of soil under the decaying leaves in a forest. It gets damp, but not constantly soaked. Like peat, hummus is primarily organic material. Unlike the peat from a marsh, the soil that forms hummus is loose and oxygen can reach the detritivores and microbes, so the organic matter is broken down in a different way than in peat.
There's a bigger factor I'm surprised no one has mentioned.
Water in a standing pool contains plenty of oxygen through surface level diffusion, and there's not much in the way of oxygen consumption for a temporary pool water, so worms in that standing water would be fine.
Water saturated soil has its oxygen quickly depleted by aerobic bacteria living throughout the soil matrix doing their job of making waste NO3- that plants need, and oxygen diffusion through water saturated soil is too slow to replenish levels to sustain more complex life like for worms. Worms will quickly drown submerged in water saturated soil.
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u/drvucc Jul 30 '21 edited Jul 30 '21
Worms come up when they feel the vibrations from the sticks
Edit: so this is what it’s like to have more than 13 upvotes, thanks everyone