A methodological framework to embrace soil biodiversity

Publication date: Available online 13 July 2019Source: Soil Biology and BiochemistryAuthor(s): Stefan Geisen, MariaJ.I. Briones, Huijie Gan, Valerie M. Behan-Pelletier, Ville-Petri Friman, G. Arjen de Groot, S.Emilia Hannula, Zoë Lindo, Laurent Philippot, Alexei V. Tiunov, Diana H. WallAbstractSoils host the vast majority of life on Earth including microorganisms and animals, and supporting all terrestrial vegetation. While soil organisms are pivotal for ecosystem functioning, the assemblages of different biota from a taxonomic and functional perspective, as well as how these different organisms interact, remains poorly known. We provide a brief overview of the taxonomic and functional diversity of all major groups of soil biota across different scales and organism sizes, ranging from viruses to prokaryotes and eukaryotes. This reveals knowledge gaps in relation to all soil biodiversity groups, which are especially evident for viruses, protists, micro- and meso-fauna. We review currently-available methods to study the taxonomic and functional diversity of soil organisms by grouping all commonly-used methods into morphological, biochemical and molecular approaches. We list potentials and limitations of the methods to reveal that there is, as yet, no single method to fully characterize the biodiversity even of a single group of soil biota. Yet, we stress that we now have the methods available to enable scientists to disentangle the taxonomic and functional diversity of virtual...
Source: Soil Biology and Biochemistry - Category: Biology Source Type: research