sMacroS

Towards a synthesis in soil fauna macroecology

First meeting: 19.05. – 22.05.2025

PIs:

Anton Potapov
Nico Eisenhauer

iDiv member:

Anton Potapov
Nico Eisenhauer

Project summary:

Global soils host most of terrestrial biodiversity and support the functioning of the biosphere. Decomposition and other soil processes are jointly regulated by different groups of soil fauna – microfauna (protists and nematodes), mesofauna (springtails and mites), and macrofauna (insects, myriapods, woodlice, spiders, and earthworms). Currently, soil macroecological research effort is splitted among these groups. sMacroS is proposed as a synthesis platform across existing soil macroecology initiatives with major aims to (1) describe global patterns of soil fauna diversity and community metabolism across taxa and (2) establish common standards and data platforms, and push forward data synthesis in the field of soil macroecology. Our biodiversity synthesis will test the hypothesis that alpha-diversity of soil fauna peaks in temperate soils while beta-diversity peaks in tropical soils and this trend mostly is pronounced for macrofauna. Our energy synthesis will deliver a global census of soil animal community metabolism, focusing on the contribution of soil fauna to the terrestrial biosphere respiration. As the data objective, we will harmonise existing global datasets on soil fauna and propose common data standards and templates for soil (macro)ecological research. In our Think Tank, we will develop a roadmap towards the integration of soil fauna into global biogeochemical models using trait and/or food-web approaches. sMacroS is naturally based on our ongoing soil macroecology activities (sOilFauna, Soil BON), and supported by the world-best topic expertise of the project team and two contributed postdocs. The synthesis group will support global biogeochemical models and currently developing soil-related policies.

Participants: 

Carlos Barreto (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), George Brown (Embrapa Forestry), Daniel Castro (Instituto Amazonico de Investigaciones Cientificas SINCHI), Ting-Wen Chen (Georg August University of Göttingen), Pallieter De Smedt (Ghent University), Nico Eisenhauer (iDiv), André Franco (Indiana University Bloomington), Stefan Geisen (Wageningen University & Research), Carlos Guerra (Coimbra University), Charlene Janion-Scheepers (University of Cape Town), Hannah Karuri (University of Embu), Valentyna Krashevska (Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre), Zoe Lindo (the University of Western Ontario), Jing-Zhong Lu (Senckenberg Natural History Museum Görlitz), Jerome Mathieu (Sorbonne University), Xue Pan (Georg August University of Göttingen), Helen Phillips (University of Helsinki), Anton Potapov (Leibniz Institute Senckenberg Museum of Natural History (SMNG)), Christian Ristok (iDiv), Xin Sun (Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences),

Remote:

Manuel Delgado Baquerizo (IRNAS-CSIC), Pierre Ganault (Université de Rouen Normandie), Karin Hohberg (Senckenberg Natural History Museum Görlitz), Malte Jochum (JMU Würzburg), Maria Tsiafouli (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)