Divergent national-scale trends of microbial and animal biodiversity revealed across diverse temperate soil ecosystems.

ABSTRACT: Soil biota accounts for ~25% of global biodiversity and is vital to nutrient cycling and primary production. There is growing momentum to study total belowground biodiversity across large ecological scales to understand how habitat and soil properties shape belowground communities. Microbial and animal components of belowground communities follow divergent responses to soil properties and land use intensification; however, it is unclear whether this extends across heterogeneous ecosystems. Here, a national-scale metabarcoding analysis of 436 locations across 7 different temperate ecosystems shows that belowground animal and microbial (bacteria, archaea, fungi, and protists) richness follow divergent trends, whereas β-diversity does not. Animal richness is governed by intensive land use and

SUBMITTER: George PBL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6405921 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature