0000000001062852
AUTHOR
Christian Mulder
Global data on earthworm abundance, biomass, diversity and corresponding environmental properties
Earthworms are an important soil taxon as ecosystem engineers, providing a variety of crucial ecosystem functions and services. Little is known about their diversity and distribution at large spatial scales, despite the availability of considerable amounts of local-scale data. Earthworm diversity data, obtained from the primary literature or provided directly by authors, were collated with information on site locations, including coordinates, habitat cover, and soil properties. Datasets were required, at a minimum, to include abundance or biomass of earthworms at a site. Where possible, site-level species lists were included, as well as the abundance and biomass of individual species and ec…
MULTIPLE CLIMATE-DRIVEN CASCADING ECOSYSTEM EFFECTS AFTER THE LOSS OF A FOUNDATION SPECIES
Abstract Climate change is evolving so fast that the related adverse effects on the environment are becoming noticeable. Thus, there is an urgent need to explore and understand the effects generated by multiple extreme climatic events (MECEs) on marine ecosystem functioning and the services provided. Accordingly, we combined long-term in-situ empirical observations in the Mediterranean Sea with a mesocosm manipulation to investigate the concurrence of increasing temperature and hypoxia events. By focussing on a foundation mussel species, we were able to detect several cascade events triggered by a mass mortality event caused by stressful temperature and oxygen conditions, and resulting in a…
Soil biodiversity monitoring in Europe : ongoing activities and challenges
International audience; The increasing interest in soil biodiversity and its protection includes both the biodiversity conservation issues and the mostly unknown economic and ecological values of services provided by soil biodiversity. Inventory and monitoring are necessary tools for the achievement of an adequate level of knowledge regarding soil biodiversity status and for the detection of biodiversity hot spots as well as areas where current levels of biodiversity are under threat of decline. In this paper the main tools and methodological approaches for soil biodiversity measurement are presented. Technical aspects related to the inventory and monitoring activities at a large spatial sc…
Ecological networks in managed ecosystems: Connecting structure to services
Introduction Ecological networks represent a cornerstone of ecology: they describe and evaluate the links between form and function in multispecies systems, such as food-web structure and dynamics, and they connect different scales and levels of biological organization (Moore and de Ruiter, 2012; Wall et al., 2015). These properties of being able to elucidate both the structure within complex systems and their scaling indicate that ecological networks and network theory could be widely applied to practical problems, including management decision-making processes such as the design of nature reserves and the preservation of ecosystem services. While the study of networks – initially food-web…
Monitoring microbial diversity in European soils: ongoing projects and challenges
SPEEcolDurGenoSolCT3communication orale invitée, résumé et slides; According to the Convention of Biological Diversity (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), biodiversity is the variation in life from genes to species, communities, ecosystems, and landscapes. Soils represent a huge reservoir of biodiversity which varies in terms of taxonomic richness, relative abundance and distribution according to soil types, climatic conditions, vegetation and land uses. The key functions supporting ecosystem services as identified in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA, 2005) largely depend upon organisms that inhabit the soil. Thus, the design and implementation of a sustainable soil management strategy requires…