Soil nematode abundance and functional group composition at a global scale

• Published in: Nature
• Main Authors: Van Den Hoogan, Johan, Geisen, Stefan, Routh, Devin, Ferris, Howard, Traunspurger, Walter, Wardle, David A., De Goede, Ron G., Adams, Byron J., Ahmad, Wasim, Andriuzzi, Walter S., Bardgett, Richard D., Bonkowski, Michael, Campos-Herrera, Raquel, Cares, Juvenil E., Caruso, Tancredi, De Brtio Caixeta, Larissa, Chen, Xiaoyun, Costa, Sofia R., Creamer, Rachel E., Mauro da Cunha Castro, Jose, Dam, Marie, Djigal, Djibril, Escuer, Miguel, Griffiths, Bryan S., Gutierrez, Carmen, Hohberg, Karin, Kalinkina, Daria, Kardol, Paul, Kergunteuil, Alan, Korthals, Gerard W., Krashevska, Valentyna, Kudrin, Alexey A., Li, Qi, Liang, Wenju, Magilton, Matthew, Marais, Mariette, Martín, Jose A., Matveeva, Elizaveta, Mayad, El Hassan, Mulder, Christian, Mullin, Peter, Neilson, Roy, Nguyen, Thi Anh D., Nielsen, Uffe N. (R17023)
• Other Authors: Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment (Host institution)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: U.K., Nature Publishing Group 2019
• Subjects: XXXXXX - Unknown; nematodes; soil nematodes; soils; Arctic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1418-6; http://handle.westernsydney.edu.au:8081/1959.7/uws:52768

Soil organisms are a crucial part of the terrestrial biosphere. Despite their importance for ecosystem functioning, few 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 6,759 georeferenced samples to generate a mechanistic understanding of the patterns of the global abundance of nematodes in the soil and the composition of their functional groups. The resulting maps show that 4.4 ± 0.64 × 1020 nematodes (with a total biomass of approximately 0.3 gigatonnes) inhabit surface soils across the world, with higher abundances in sub-Arctic regions (38% of total) than in temperate (24%) or tropical (21%) regions. 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 in global biogeochemical models and will enable the prediction of elemental cycling under current and future climate scenarios.