Soil Organisms - an international open access journal on the taxonomic and functional biodiversity in the soil.

Abstract

Biodiversity change and the identification of the underlying drivers are in the focus of ecological research and public and political debate (IPBES 2019). Soil biodiversity has thus far rarely entered this discussion and analyses (Cameron et al. 2018), and substantial gaps in soil biodiversity and function data exist (Cameron et al. 2019). Furthermore, we know exceptionally little about temporal changes in soil biodiversity (Phillips et al. 2017), although soil biodiversity is thought to be essential for critical ecosystem functions and services (Bardgett & van der Putten 2014, Wall et al. 2015) but threatened by anthropogenic impacts (Veresoglou et al. 2015). At the same time, taxonomic expertise of soil biodiversity may be at risk, while novel molecular information still needs to be linked to species and functions (Geiger et al. 2016).