Driving forces from soil invertebrates to ecosystem functioning: the allometric perspective

Mulder, Christian

doi:10.1007/s00114-006-0130-1

Cited by 59 publications

(58 citation statements)

References 130 publications

(182 reference statements)

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“…Relevance of changes in soil biota for ecosystem services Soil biota are key for a range of ecosystem services, including soil structure maintenance, water retention, and supply of nutrients (Swift et al 2004;Mulder 2006;Brussaard et al 2007b;Kibblewhite et al 2008). Soil structure maintenance is an ecosystem service provided by roots and soil biota like earthworms, bacteria, and fungi.…”

Section: Effects Of Different Organic Fertilizers On Soil Biotamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Soil biota play an important role in ecological processes in the soil and in the provision of various ecosystem services, such as maintenance of soil structure, water regulation, and supply of nutrients (Brussaard et al 1997;Swift et al 2004;Mulder 2006;Kibblewhite et al 2008). In the search for sustainable agricultural grassland systems, these processes and ecosystem services, provided by soil biota, become more important (Brussaard et al 2007a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Soil biological quality of grassland fertilized with adjusted cattle manure slurries in comparison with organic and inorganic fertilizers

et al. 2009

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We studied the effect of five fertilizers (including two adjusted manure slurries) and an untreated control on soil biota and explored the effect on the ecosystem services they provided. Our results suggest that the available N (NO 3 − and NH 4 + ) in the soil plays a central role in the effect of fertilizers on nematodes and microorganisms. Microorganisms are affected directly through nutrient availability and indirectly through grass root mass. Nematodes are affected indirectly through microbial biomass and grass root mass. A lower amount of available N in the treatment with inorganic fertilizer was linked to a higher root mass and a higher abundance and proportion of herbivorous nematodes. A higher amount of available N in the organic fertilizer treatments resulted in a twofold higher bacterial activity (measured as bacterial growth rate, viz. thymidine incorporation), a higher proportion of bacterivorous nematodes, a 30% higher potential N mineralization (aerobic incubation), and 25-50% more potentially mineralizable N (anaerobic incubation). Compared to inorganic fertilizer, organic fertilization increased the C total, the N total, the activity of decomposers, and the supply of nutrients via the soil food web. Within the group of organic fertilizers, there was no significant difference in C total, abundances of soil biota, and the potential N mineralization rate. There were no indications that farmyard manure or the adjusted manure slurries provided the ecosystem service "supply of nutrients" better than normal manure slurry. Normal manure slurry provided the highest bacterial activity and the highest amount of mineralizable N and it was the only fertilizer resulting in a positive trend in grass yield over the years [2000][2001][2002][2003][2004][2005]. The number of earthworm burrows was higher in the treatments with organic fertilizers compared to the one with the inorganic fertilizer, which suggests that organic fertilizers stimulate the ecosystem service of water regulation more than inorganic fertilizer. The trend towards higher epigeic earthworm numbers with application of farmyard manure and one of the adjusted manure slurries, combined with the negative relation between epigeic earthworms and bulk density and a significantly lower penetration resistance in the same fertilizer types, is preliminary evidence that these two organic fertilizer types contribute more to the service of soil structure maintenance than inorganic fertilizer.

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Section: Effects Of Different Organic Fertilizers On Soil Biotamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soil biological quality of grassland fertilized with adjusted cattle manure slurries in comparison with organic and inorganic fertilizers

et al. 2009

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“…Soil biota play an important role in these processes and in the provision of various ecosystem services: supply of nutrients, maintenance of soil structure, water regulation and, more generally, in the resistance and resilience of the below-ground system (Brussaard et al, 1997;Mulder, 2006). Grassland management directly and indirectly influences the soil food web and its functions (Bardgett, 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soil biological quality after 36 years of ley-arable cropping, permanent grassland and permanent arable cropping

Eekeren

Bommelé

Bloem

et al. 2008

Applied Soil Ecology

139

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Nematodes Microbiology Soil biotaCrop rotation Grassland a b s t r a c tInsight is needed into how management influences soil biota when sustainable grassland systems are developed. A crop rotation of grass and maize can be sustainable in terms of efficient nutrient use. However, there is lack of information on the effect of such a crop rotation on soil biological quality. Earthworms, nematodes, bacteria and fungi were sampled over three years in a 36 years old experiment. Permanent arable land was compared with permanent grassland and with a ley-arable crop rotation. In the rotation, a period of three years of grassland (temporary grassland) was followed by a period of three years of arable land (temporary arable land) and vice versa. In the first year of arable cropping in the rotation, the number of earthworms was already low and not different from continuous cropping. In the three-year grass ley, the abundance of earthworms returned to the level of permanent grassland in the second year.However, the restoration of earthworm biomass took a minimum of three years. Furthermore, the anecic species did not recover the dominance they had in the permanent grassland. The numbers of herbivorous and microbivorous nematodes in the ley-crop rotation reached similar levels to those in the permanent treatments within one to two years. Although the same holds for the nematode genera composition, the Maturity Index and the proportion of omnivorous nematodes in the temporary treatments remained significantly lower than in their permanent counterparts. Differences in recovery were also found among microbial parameters. In the temporary treatments, bacterial growth rate and the capacity to degrade a suite of substrates recovered in the second year. However, the Community-Level Physiological Profiles in the permanent grassland remained different from the other treatments. Our results suggest that many functions of soil biota that are well established in permanent grassland, are restored in a ley-arable crop rotation. However, due to a reduction in certain species, specific functions of these soil biota could be reduced or lost. The ley-arable crop rotations were intermediate to permanent grassland and continuous arable land in terms of functioning of soil biota (e.g., Nmineralization). In terms of the functional aspects of the soil biota, permanent grassland might be preferable wherever possible. For maize cultivation, a ley-arable crop rotation is preferable to continuous arable land. However, a ley-arable crop rotation is only preferable to continuous arable cropping if it is not practised at the expense of permanent grassland at farm level.

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“…Basal entities such as the soil microbes are either shortly enhanced (bacteria) or affected (fungi) by Cry proteins. Transgenic maize alters the fungal-bacterial biomass ratio, and consequently the decomposition process, possibly the most important ecosystem service in soil biota (Wardle et al 2004;Mulder 2006). Articles involving soil nematodes (Perez-Moreno and Read 2001), oligochaetes (Hedlund et al 2004) and insects (Klironomos and Hart 2001;Filser et al 2002) have emphasized the importance of fungi in the facilitation of decomposition processes such as nitrogen recycling (Table 1; Jansa et al 2002).…”

Section: Disentangling Resource Qualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, if GM plants affect the growth conditions for either bacteria or fungi (or both), secondary effects on other organisms at higher trophic levels could become detectable. Changes in available soil microbial resources always cause shifts in faunal interactions, making changes in soil biodiversity evident (Ammann 2005;Mulder 2006;Sánchez-Moreno et al 2006;Powell 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biotechnology, environmental forcing, and unintended trophic cascades

Mulder

Lotz

2009

Arthropod-Plant Interactions

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A long ongoing discussion between scientists and policy decision-makers seems to have entered recently into a new phase. The consequences of release of transgenic crops into the environment are being discussed not only by scientists but also by farmers, environmental groups and politicians, while an increasing amount of data is becoming available at all biological scales, including the field level. However, data still rely on experiments designed to capture direct consumer-resource interactions.Here we argue that we should attempt to concentrate on the ecosystem functioning of soil biota under geneticallymodified (GM) plants, because functional and mechanistic analysis of the multitrophic effects of GM plants on soil biota is still lacking. It is our opinion that we should avoid addressing taxa and soil communities separately, but link them at their functional level. We shall explain why, using examples from ecosystem services, allometric scaling, and soil food webs. The energy flow of any food web under stress incorporates several factors and pooled information on ecosystem services and on the different responses of soil invertebrates to induced perturbations in other trophic levels. Therefore, we will systematically focus on the complementarities of these approaches.

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Driving forces from soil invertebrates to ecosystem functioning: the allometric perspective

Cited by 59 publications

References 130 publications

Soil biological quality of grassland fertilized with adjusted cattle manure slurries in comparison with organic and inorganic fertilizers

Soil biological quality of grassland fertilized with adjusted cattle manure slurries in comparison with organic and inorganic fertilizers

Soil biological quality after 36 years of ley-arable cropping, permanent grassland and permanent arable cropping

Biotechnology, environmental forcing, and unintended trophic cascades

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