Understanding the relationship between soil biodiversity and ecosystem functioning is critical to predicting and monitoring the effects of ecosystem changes on important soil processes. However, most of Earth’s soils are too biologically diverse to identify each species present and determine their f...
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| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
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2006
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| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.496.914 http://warnercnr.colostate.edu/~edayres/Pubs/2006 Adams et al Soil Biol Biochem.pdf |
| Summary: | Understanding the relationship between soil biodiversity and ecosystem functioning is critical to predicting and monitoring the effects of ecosystem changes on important soil processes. However, most of Earth’s soils are too biologically diverse to identify each species present and determine their functional role in food webs. The soil ecosystems of Victoria Land (VL) Antarctica are functionally and biotically simple, and serve as in situ models for determining the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem processes. For a few VL taxa (microarthropods, nematodes, algae, mosses and lichens), species diversity has been intensively assessed in highly localized habitats, but little is known of how community assemblages vary across broader spatial scales, or across latitudinal and environmental gradients. The composition of tardigrade, rotifer, protist, fungal and prokaryote communities is emerging. The latter groups are the least studied |
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