Nematodes enhance plant growth and nutrient uptake under C and N-rich conditions.

ABSTRACT: The role of soil fauna in crucial ecosystem services such as nutrient cycling remains poorly quantified, mainly because of the overly reductionistic approach adopted in most experimental studies. Given that increasing nitrogen inputs in various ecosystems influence the structure and functioning of soil microbes and the activity of fauna, we aimed to quantify the role of the entire soil nematode community in nutrient mineralization in an experimental set-up emulating nutrient-rich field conditions and accounting for crucial interactions amongst the soil microbial communities and plants. To this end, we reconstructed a complex soil foodweb in mesocosms that comprised largely undisturbed native microflora and the entire nematode community added into defaunated soil, planted with Lolium perenn

SUBMITTER: Gebremikael MT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5015107 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature