The effects of global change on soil faunal communities: a meta-analytic approach

Abstract

Human impacts are causing an unprecedented change of biodiversity across scales. To quantify the nature and degree of the biodiversity change, there have been a number of meta-analysis studies investigating the effects of global change drivers (land use, climate, etc.). However, these studies include few primary literature studies of soil biodiversity. Soil biodiversity is important for a variety of ecosystem services that are critical for human wellbeing. Yet, we know little about how soil organisms may respond to changing environmental conditions. Although studies have investigated the impact of global change drivers on soil biodiversity, they lack sufficient depth in the number of drivers and/or taxa included. Additionally, the previous focus on aboveground organisms has also resulted in a bias towards certain global change drivers in the primary literature. For example, climate change and land use change are more often studied, whilst pollution is typically understudied as a global change driver. Building on previous studies, we will conduct a meta-analysis to compare the effects of global change drivers (land use, habitat fragmentation/loss, fire, climate change, invasive species, pollution, and nutrient enrichment) on soil fauna (micro- to macro-invertebrates). This project aims to fill the current gaps in the literature, and actively participate in incorporating soil biodiversity into future global biodiversity assessments, by creating the first global open-acess dataset on the impacts of multiple global change drivers on soil fauna.