Multifunctionality of belowground food webs: resource, size and spatial energy channels
2022 | journal article; overview. A publication with affiliation to the University of Göttingen.
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Details
- Authors
- Potapov, Anton M.
- Abstract
- The belowground compartment of terrestrial ecosystems drives nutrient cycling, the decomposition and stabilisation of organic matter, and supports aboveground life. Belowground consumers create complex food webs that regulate functioning, ensure stability and support biodiversity both below and above ground. However, existing soil food-web reconstructions do not match recently accumulated empirical evidence and there is no comprehensive reproducible approach that accounts for the complex resource, size and spatial structure of food webs in soil. Here I build on generic food-web organisation principles and use multifunctional classification of soil protists, invertebrates and vertebrates, to reconstruct a ‘multichannel’ food web across size classes of soil-associated consumers. I infer weighted trophic interactions among trophic guilds using feeding preferences and prey protection traits (evolutionarily inherited traits), size and spatial distributions (niche overlaps), and biomass-dependent feeding. I then use food-web reconstruction, together with assimilation efficiencies, to calculate energy fluxes assuming a steady-state energetic system. Based on energy fluxes, I propose a number of indicators, related to stability, biodiversity and multiple ecosystem-level functions such as herbivory, top-down control, translocation and transformation of organic matter. I illustrate this approach with an empirical example, comparing it with traditional resource-focused soil food-web reconstruction. The multichannel reconstruction can be used to assess ‘trophic multifunctionality’ (analogous to ecosystem multifunctionality), i.e. simultaneous support of multiple trophic functions by the food web, and compare it across communities and ecosystems spanning beyond the soil. With further empirical validation of the proposed functional indicators, this multichannel reconstruction approach could provide an effective tool for understanding animal diversity–ecosystem functioning relationships in soil. This tool hopefully will inspire more researchers to describe soil communities and belowground–aboveground interactions comprehensively. Such studies will provide informative indicators for including consumers as active agents in biogeochemical models, not only locally but also on regional and global scales.
- Issue Date
- 2022
- Publisher
- Blackwell Publishing Ltd
- Journal
- Biological Reviews
- Project
- SFB 990: Ökologische und sozioökonomische Funktionen tropischer Tieflandregenwald-Transformationssysteme (Sumatra, Indonesien)
SFB 990 | B | B08: Struktur und Funktion des Zersetzersystems in Transformationssystemen von Tiefland-Regenwäldern - ISSN
- 1464-7931
- eISSN
- 1469-185X
- Language
- English
- Subject(s)
- sfb990_reviews
- Sponsor
- Alexander von Humboldt‐Stiftung http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100005156
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001659
Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst
GEORG‐AUGUST‐UNIVERSITAET GOTTINGEN