Johann Friedrich Blumenbach Institute of Zoology and Anthropology, Animal Ecology, University of Göttingen, Untere Karspüle 2, 37073, Göttingen, Germany.
A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Russian Academy of Sciences, Leninsky Prospect 33, 119071, Moscow.
Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc. 2022 Aug;97(4):1691-1711. doi: 10.1111/brv.12857. Epub 2022 Apr 7.
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.
陆地生态系统的地下部分驱动着养分循环、有机物质的分解和稳定化，并为地上生命提供支持。地下消费者创造了复杂的食物网，调节着功能，确保稳定性，并支持地上和地下的生物多样性。然而，现有的土壤食物网重建与最近积累的经验证据并不匹配，也没有一种全面的、可重复的方法来解释土壤中食物网的复杂资源、大小和空间结构。在这里，我基于通用的食物网组织原则，并利用土壤原生生物、无脊椎动物和脊椎动物的多功能分类，构建了一个跨越土壤相关消费者大小类别的“多通道”食物网。我通过摄食偏好和猎物保护特征（进化继承的特征）、大小和空间分布（生态位重叠）以及基于生物量的摄食，推断出营养阶层之间的加权营养相互作用。然后，我使用食物网重建和同化效率来计算能量通量，假设一个稳态的能量系统。基于能量通量，我提出了一些指标，与稳定性、生物多样性以及多个生态系统功能相关，如草食性、自上而下的控制、有机物质的转移和转化。我通过一个实证例子来说明这种方法，并将其与传统的以资源为中心的土壤食物网重建进行比较。多通道重建可用于评估“营养多功能性”（类似于生态系统多功能性），即食物网同时支持多种营养功能，并在跨越土壤的群落和生态系统之间进行比较。随着对所提出的功能指标的进一步实证验证，这种多通道重建方法可以为理解土壤中动物多样性与生态系统功能关系提供有效的工具。这个工具有望激发更多的研究人员全面描述土壤群落和地下-地上相互作用。这样的研究将为将消费者作为生物地球化学模型中的主动因素提供有意义的指标，不仅在当地，而且在区域和全球范围内。
