ABSTRACT
Before the 1970s, studies of the edaphic fauna in Cuba were scarce; there were only studies of a few of the most important pests, due to changes in the agricultural production systems in Cuba. By the middle of the twentieth century, only four species of native earthworms had been reported in Cuba. Zoological workers based their earthworm studies on literature, slides, and guides of foreign practices, and examples of exotic earthworm species imported from the United States to Havana University. During the second half of the twentieth century, motivated by dif¤culties in obtaining educational support, Dr. Aurelia Longoria noticed differences between Cuban earthworm species and the literature on morphological studies and produced a manual for the Annelida group, incorporating the knowledge into invertebrate zoology classes (González 1978). The earthworm species were not known, and they were cataloged only by numbers and descriptions. Advances in morphological, ecological, population, and systematic breeding of the Cuban soil fauna, especially the
CONTENTS
I Introduction .................................................................................................. 533 II Start of Vermiculture in Cuba ...................................................................... 534 III Vermiculture Research Program .................................................................. 534 IV Establishment of Vermiculture in Cuba ....................................................... 538
A Basic Small Units ................................................................................... 538 B Basic Medium-Size Units ...................................................................... 538 C Large Units............................................................................................. 538
References .............................................................................................................. 542
earthworms, took place in the Faculty of Biology at the Havana University, which has an earthworm collection from different regions of Cuba.
