Roots rather than shoot residues drive soil arthropod communities of arable fields

Abstract

Soil food webs are driven by plant-derived carbon (C) entering the soil belowground as rhizodeposits or aboveground via leaf litter, with recent research pointing to a higher importance of the former for driving forest soil food webs. Using natural abundance stable isotopes of wheat (C3 plant) and maize (C4 plant), we followed and quantified the incorporation of shoot residue- and root-derived maize C into the soil animal food web of an arable field for 1 year, thereby disentangling the importance of shoot residue- versus root-derived resources for arable soil food webs. On average, shoot residue-derived resources only contributed less than 12% to soil arthropod body C, while incorporation of root-derived resources averaged 26% after 2 months of maize crop and increased to 32% after 1 year. However, incorporation of root-derived maize C did not consistently increase with time: rather, it increased, decreased or remained constant depending on species. Further, preference of shoot residue- or root-derived resources was also species-specific with about half the species incorporating mainly root-derived C, while only a few species preferentially incorporated shoot residue-derived C, and about 40% incorporated both shoot residue- as well as root-derived C. The results highlight the predominant importance of root-derived resources for arable soil food webs and suggest that shoot residues only form an additional resource of minor importance. Variation in the use of plant-derived C between soil arthropod species suggests that the flux of C through soil food webs of arable systems can only be disentangled by adopting a species-specific approach.