First meeting: 19.-22.05.2025

PIs:
Anton Potapov
Nico Eisenhauer

iDiv member:
Helge Bruelheide
Anton Potapov

Project summary:
Global soils host most of terrestrial biodiversity and support the functioning of the biosphere.
Decomposition and other soil processes are jointly regulated by different groups of soil fauna –
microfauna (protists and nematodes), mesofauna (springtails and mites), and macrofauna
(insects, myriapods, woodlice, spiders, and earthworms). Currently, soil macroecological
research effort is splitted among these groups. sMacroS is proposed as a synthesis platform
across existing soil macroecology initiatives with major aims to (1) describe global patterns of
soil fauna diversity and community metabolism across taxa and (2) establish common standards
and data platforms, and push forward data synthesis in the field of soil macroecology. Our
biodiversity synthesis will test the hypothesis that alpha-diversity of soil fauna peaks in
temperate soils while beta-diversity peaks in tropical soils and this trend mostly is pronounced
for macrofauna. Our energy synthesis will deliver a global census of soil animal community
metabolism, focusing on the contribution of soil fauna to the terrestrial biosphere respiration. As
the data objective, we will harmonise existing global datasets on soil fauna and propose
common data standards and templates for soil (macro)ecological research. In our Think Tank,
we will develop a roadmap towards the integration of soil fauna into global biogeochemical
models using trait and/or food-web approaches. sMacroS is naturally based on our ongoing soil
macroecology activities (sOilFauna, Soil BON), and supported by the world-best topic expertise
of the project team and two contributed postdocs. The synthesis group will support global
biogeochemical models and currently developing soil-related policies.

In person participants:
tba

Remote partcipants:
tba

Meeting report:
tba