necrobiome, the ecosystem of carcasses. In the necrobiome, dead matter is not inert—it is a base unit of life: Carrion beetles pilfer, maggots feast, seeds scatter, raccoons scavenge, vultures peck, and microbes bloom. “If you zoom in to the microbial level, life is exploding. It’s multiplying, it’s diversifying,” Jeffery Tomberlin, a professor in entomology at Texas A&M, told me. “It’s a beautiful thing.”
This is part of the “What are words for?” project.
This word scored a seven on a three part scale of allusiveness, political oomph and cultural capital (min score 1, max score 3 for each part of the scale)
marchudson.net 