After 7-20 years

The bark has fallen off and the wood is softening – a result of the fungi activity. Insects can now eat the wood, but the fungi's hyphae remain essential food. The click beetle stuffs itself. Carpenter ants can also be found. They gnaw paths through the wood, and build their homes there.

After 20-50 years

The wood has decomposed almost entirely and mosses work their way over the log – wood-moss and feather-moss. Some wood eaters still remain, and of course predators – the brown centipede chases the little creatures.

Traces vanish

The spruce is gone after 50 years, decomposed and carefully buried. New spruce plants often grow from the old log's blanket of moss. The spruce has been a universe for a large, but unknown number of species during its long life – most of them invisible to us relatively gigantic people.