Global distribution of soil fauna functional groups and their estimated litter consumption across biomes

• Published in: Scientific Reports
• Main Authors: Heděnec, Petr, Jiménez, Juan José, Moradi, Jabbar, Domene, Xavier, Hackenberger, Davorka, Barot, Sebastien, Frossard, Aline, Oktaba, Lidia, Filser, Juliane, Kindlmann, Pavel, Frouz, Jan
• Other Authors: European Cooperation in Science and Technology, Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (Czech Republic), CSIC - Unidad de Recursos de Información Científica para la Investigación (URICI)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Nature Publishing Group 2022
• Subjects: Ecology; Tundra
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10261/358648; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-21563-z

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Soil invertebrates (i.e., soil fauna) are important drivers of many key processes in soils including soil aggregate formation, water retention, and soil organic matter transformation. Many soil fauna groups directly or indirectly participate in litter consumption. However, the quantity of litter consumed by major faunal groups across biomes remains unknown. To estimate this quantity, we reviewed > 1000 observations from 70 studies that determined the biomass of soil fauna across various biomes and 200 observations from 44 studies on litter consumption by soil fauna. To compare litter consumption with annual litterfall, we analyzed 692 observations from 24 litterfall studies and 183 observations from 28 litter stock studies. The biomass of faunal groups was highest in temperate grasslands and then decreased in the following order: boreal forest > temperate forest > tropical grassland > tundra > tropical forest > Mediterranean ecosystems > desert and semidesert. Tropical grasslands, desert biomes, and Mediterranean ecosystems were dominated by termites. Temperate grasslands were dominated by omnivores, while temperate forests were dominated by earthworms. ...