Soil nematode abundance and functional group composition at a global scale

• Published in: Nature
• Main Authors: van den Hoogen, J., Geisen, S., Routh, D., Ferris, H., Traunspurger, W., Wardle, D., de Goede, R., Adams, B., Ahmad, W., Andriuzzi, W.S., Bardgett, R.D., Bonkowski, M., Campos-Herrera, R., Cares,J.E., Caruso, T., de Brito Caixeta, L., Chen, X., da Rocha Costa, S.S., Creamer, R., da Cunha Castro, J.M., Dam, M., Djigal, D., Escuer, M, Griffiths, B., Gutiérrez, C., Hohberg, K., Kalinkina, D., Kardol, P., Kergunteuil, A., Korthals, G., Krashevska, V., Kudrin, A., Li, Q, Liang, W., Magilton, M, Marais, M., Rodríguez Martín, J.A., Matveeva, E., Mayad, E.H., Mulder, C., Mullin, P., Neilson, R., Nguyen, D., Nielsen, U.N., Hiroaki Okada, Palomares Rius, J.E., Pan, K., Peneva, V., Pellissier, L., Pereira da Silva, J.C., Pitteloud, C., Powers, T.O., Powers, K., Quist, C., Rasmann, S., Sánchez Moreno, S., Scheu, S., Setälä, H., Sushchuk, A., Tiunov, A., Trap, J., van der Putten, W., Vestergård, M., Villenave, C., Waeyenberge, L., Wall, D.H., Wilschut, R., Wright, D., Yang, J.I., Crowther, T.W.
• Other Authors: Campos-Herera, Raquel 0000-0003-0852-5269, Escuer, Miguel 0000-0001-6116-2925, Gutiérrez, Carmen 0000-0001-5829-6906, Rodriguez Martín J.A, 0000-0002-9158-9564
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Springer Nature 2019
• Subjects: Soil nematode; Diversity; functional group; global scale; Arctic
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10261/202493; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1418-6

Soil organisms are a crucial part of the terrestrial biosphere. Despite their importance for ecosystem functioning, no quantitative, spatially-explicit models of the active belowground community currently exist. In particular, nematodes are the most abundant animals on Earth, filling all trophic levels in the soil food web. Here, we use 6,579 georeferenced samples to generate a mechanistic understanding of the patterns of global soil nematode abundance and functional group composition. The resulting maps show that 4.4 ± 0.64  1020 nematodes (total biomass ~0.3 Gt) inhabit surface soils across the world, with higher abundances in sub-arctic regions (38% of total), than in temperate (24%), or tropical regions (21%). Regional variations in these global trends also provide insights into local patterns of soil fertility and functioning. These high-resolution models provide the first steps towards representing soil ecological processes into global biogeochemical models, to predict elemental cycling under current and future climate scenarios T.W.C. from DOB Ecology and S.G. by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (grant 016.Veni.181.078). Peer reviewed