sMacroS

Towards a synthesis in soil fauna macroecology

First meeting: tba

PIs:

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.

In person participants:

Remote partcipants: