Soil biotic complexity as the engine of ecosystem functions and resistance to disturbance.

Biodiversity underpins ecosystem functionality and stability. It is becoming increasingly clear that soil diversity and community complexity in particular (the presence of functionally diverse, interconnected organisms) are decisive for the maintenance of multiple ecosystem processes such as plant productivity and nutrient cycling. However, due to staggering soil diversity, difficulty to manipulate, and inadequacy of prior ecological concepts when applied to soil, we lack a thorough understanding of the link between soil biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and environmental pressures across different soil types. This project will execute for the first time a series of microcosm experiments simulating contrasting European grasslands where soil community complexity will be manipulated to examine: 1) the effect of soil complexity on plant diversity, productivity and nutrient cycling across different grassland soils and their stability under different environmental pressures (drought, biomass removal, and intensified herbivory); 2) which key soil taxa and the interactions they form might be universally responsible for enhanced ecosystem stability across soils and stressors. The findings will not only advance our knowledge about the importance of soil biodiversity for grassland functioning and stability under disturbance but also delineate the biotic network properties and keystone taxa that are at the core of these processes and should be the focus of conservation efforts.

Keywords:ECOLOGY

Disciplines:Community ecology, Soil ecology, Terrestrial ecology