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JenaTron - An Experimental Approach to Study the Effects of Plant History and Soil History on Grassland Ecosystem Functioning

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Blind spots in global soil biodiversity and ecosystem function research.

Carlos A Guerra^1,2, Anna Heintz-Buschart^3,4, Johannes Sikorski⁵

¹German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany. carlos.guerra@idiv.de.

Nature Communications

|August 5, 2020

Summary

Soil macroecological studies reveal significant data gaps in biodiversity and ecosystem functions globally. Addressing these spatial, taxonomic, and temporal data limitations is crucial for understanding soil organisms and their conservation.

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Area of Science:

Soil ecology
Macroecology
Biodiversity research

Background:

Soils host significant global biodiversity, underpinning critical ecosystem functions.
Understanding soil organism distribution and function is vital for conservation and governance.
Macroecological analyses require diverse global environmental conditions.

Purpose of the Study:

To identify and characterize environmental data gaps in soil macroecological studies.
To assess limitations in current research for exploring soil biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships.
To provide priorities for expanding soil macroecological research.

Main Methods:

Analysis of data from 17,186 global sampling sites.
Characterization of spatial, environmental, taxonomic, and functional data gaps.
Evaluation of temporal data availability and biodiversity-ecosystem functioning links.

Main Results:

Significant spatial, environmental, taxonomic, and functional data gaps identified globally.
Almost complete absence of temporally explicit data in soil macroecological studies.
Limited overlap (0.3%) between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning data at sampling sites.

Conclusions:

Urgent need to address data gaps to advance soil macroecology.
Priorities include expanding data collection across diverse environments and taxa.
Future research should focus on integrating biodiversity and ecosystem functioning data over time.