Research projects
Soil BON Foodweb Team (SBF Team)
Soils host approximately 50% of the biomass and a major part of the diversity of animals on land. However, large-scale data that link soil animal diversity with ecosystem functions is limited to few regional studies, hampering our understanding of soil animal contribution to global biogeochemistry. Besides, global abiotic and biotic drivers and assembly processes in soil animal communities and food webs have not been comprehensively assessed. The SBF Team is an international initiative that addresses these gaps by a standardized global assessment of soil animal communities across micro-, meso-, and macrofauna. By sampling Soil BON sites (https://www.globalsoilbiodiversity.org/soilbon), this initiative is the first to link soil animal communities across the size spectrum to a range of soil functions worldwide.
This is a voluntary initiative that at present has no explicit funds. I lead the coordination team of the initiative what includes soil ecologists from 20+ countries covering all continents and commonly underrepresented regions such as Russia, South America and Africa. We developed common sampling and data collection protocols. We intend to expand the network in the beginning of 2022 and conduct the first global sampling campaign in 2022. A minimum of 200 sampling sites will be comprehensively assessed globally by many local Field teams, each sampling few locations. Jointly, we will be able to produce unprecedented data to address exciting and challenging questions and establish a global collaboration network for soil animal diversity monitoring and future joint work. If you are intereted to participate, please, contact me.
Here is our call paper with more details:
https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.01.11.475793
#GlobalCollembola initiative
is a distributed-effort voluntary initiative aiming at understanding the global distribution of diversity and abundance of Collembola. The initiative is targeting to compile published and unpublished data on abundance and species diversity (community data) of Collembola available from private archives of researchers around the globe. This is a huge effort, which is possible because many people contributed a piece. The initiative allowed to standardize available data, make it accessible for re-use and save the data in long term. It also allowed to recognise problems in compatibility of existing data and identify gaps of knowledge. We have several synthesis publications under preparation.
I initiated this initiative in July 2019. Now it joins >100 researchers, and was successful in compillation of data from >40,000 samples representing >2500 sites globally. Collected data are structured as the global database on collembolan communities, which will be open for further synthesis studies, covering different aspects of Collembola ecological preferences, species distributions, community assembly processes and many other questions. The database will be continuously developed after initial synthesis and curated by the board of recognized experts in the field.
Related publications:
Distribution of ca. 2500 sampling sites described in the #GlobalCollembola database
Soil food webs under tropical land-use change
https://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/310995.html
Project is a part of a large multidisciplinary Collaborative Research Centre 990: Ecological and Socioeconomic Functions of Tropical Lowland Rainforest Transformation Systems (Sumatra, Indonesia) (2012 – 2023). "EFForTS" aims at providing science-based knowledge on how to protect and enhance the ecological functions of tropical forests and agricultural transformation systems at a landscape scale, while improving human welfare. Further, the program aims at providing baseline information on how to integrate agricultural land use and conservation issues. The subproject I'm working in titled "B08 - Structure and functioning of the decomposer system in lowland rainforest transformation systems" and investigates changes in the structure and functioning of decomposer food webs with conversion of tropical lowland rainforests into rubber and palm oil plantations in Sumatra, Indonesia. The project focuses on spatial and temporal variations of the response of soil food webs to rainforest conversion at the landscape level as well as responses to variations in tree diversity and management of plantation systems. Overall, the project aims at uncovering generalities on the structure of and energy flux through soil animal communities of tropical rainforest and plantation systems thereby contributing to biodiversity conservation and the development of sustainable land-use systems.
Key results of the first two phases (2012 - 2019):
Changes in structure and functioning of soil food webs with land-use change
Energy flux to higher trophic levels (TL) decreased, but energy flux to basal trophic levels increased. Community-level lipid profiles demonstrated shifts in resource use. Nematode and protist functional groups reflected change in energy channels.
Soil biodiversity loss and species turnover with land-use change
20–95% species loss in Oribatida, Collembola, Mesostigmata, Araneae, testate amoebae. Shifts in community composition are explained by high rate of species and trait turnover.
Understanding the Undescribed in tropical ecosystems
Newly described Oribatida (13 spp), Mesostigmata (1 sp), Araneae (7 spp), Chilopoda (2 spp). Genetic barcode libraries are established for tropical soil Araneae, Collembola, Oribatida and Lumbricina. All information on morphospecies is stored in http://ecotaxonomy.org cloud platform.
>15 peer-reviewed articles that have come out of this project. Most of publications can be found here:
Three main studied systems: rainforest (top), rubber monoculture (middle), oil palm monoculture (bottom).
Changes in energy flux and biomass distribution between trophic guilds and levels in soil with conversion of rainforest into oil palm plantations. For each land-use system and layer a five-node food web was constructed with decomposers (light beige), herbivores (green), predators (red) and omnivores (blue).
Species and trait turnover in ground spider communities under land-use change. Rainforest (F), jungle rubber (J), rubber (R) and oil palm (O).
Food webs across temperate and tropical ecosystems
The project aims to reveal general mechanisms and specific features of the structure and functioning of belowground food webs in four regions representing temperate and tropical ecosystems. In addition, we want to track connections between below- and above-ground food webs.
The main part of the project is being done in the framework of the linkage program, facilitating the collaboration between two major research groups in the field of soil ecology – the group of Prof. Dr. Stefan Scheu at the University of Göttingen and the group of Dr. Alexei Tiunov at the Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Russian Academy of Sciences. Four regions representing temperate and tropical ecosystems are investigated: Germany and Indonesia (Sumatra) studied by the group of Prof. Dr. Stefan Scheu; European Russia and southern Vietnam studied by Dr. Alexei Tiunov. In the framework of the linkage program, reciprocal visits and joint workshops are planned, which will foster the integration of junior researchers in international research activities and will provide the basis for long-term academic collaboration between the groups. Common experimental protocols and standardised data handling practices will be established. The research plan includes three working packages: (1) Size spectrum and biomass of soil fauna across temperate and tropical ecosystems; (2) Soil food-web structure in temperate and tropical ecosystems; (3) Animal-mycorrhizal interactions across temperate and tropical ecosystems. The research project is running across ecosystems with contrasting climate and land-use management, allowing to predict how soil food-web organisation may be affected by global change and how this may affect carbon dynamics in soil. The project was supported by the Alexander von Humboldt foundation. I prepared the proposal and coordinating the team of 10 people (part-time).
Related publications:
Energy flow across above- and below-ground ecosystem compartments. Different interaction types among trophihc guinds are shown with different colour.
Ecotaxonomy cloud research platform
Ecotaxonomy is an open cloud platform developed to integrate ecological research with taxonomic knowledge and expertise. It is a repository for functional traits, identification characters and morphospecies. In our virtual research environment, we link individual organisms to environmental conditions and functional traits. Personal ecological projects can be customized in the system, facilitating collaborative synergies of researchers worldwide. As a publicly available output, we provide pictorial catalogues for morphospecies and traits and interactive identification keys for taxa.
At present, Ecotaxonomy is linking ecological and taxonomic work within the interdisciplinary research project EFForTS in Indonesia with focus on soil and arboreal arthropods. The platform also used by a number of laboratories around the world and we are welcome to new collaborators. The project is partly funded within the framework of the EFForTS (see above). Focused proposal is in development. I am the principal developer (non IT) of the platform together with Dorothee Sandmann.
Related publications:
Size structure of soil food webs
The project is aimed to reveal how structure and functioning of the soil food webs are related to the size structure of soil communities. Size is one of the key parameters of individual organism, which defines its metabolic rate and trophic interaction partners. «Idealized» food webs are size-structured, i.e. trophic level of an organism in a food web increases with its body size. Besides, metabolic theory of ecology postulates that population energy use is equal for small- and large-sized organisms. These macro-ecological rules received empirical confirmations in aquatic ecosystems. Here we study soil food webs from this point of view.
The main goal of the project is to reveal how the size of an organism is related to its position in the soil food web. To this end, we reconstructing trophic interaction network from protists to large invertebrates that vary over 12 orders of magnitude in individual mass. The study will be conducted in natural and disturbed ecosystems. The following hypotheses will be tested: (1) In soil food webs size of organism is not related to its trophic level. Positive relationship between size and trophic level is present among microfauna, that inhabiting soil water films; (2) Due to specifics of environment, soil food webs are organised as a set of «size compartments», i.e. blocks of food web with high interactions density; (3) Total energy flows through the small and large organisms (the degree of «energetic flow equivalence») is significantly different in litter and mineral soil, since the activity of large animals in mineral soil is limited. To test these hypotheses we will use novel methods such as compound-specific stable isotope analysis of individual amino acids and analysis of DNA in the gut content. We will also develop new methods for separation of soil microfauna by body mass. Analysis of an array of model ecosystems, differing in vegetation, climate and disturbance, would allow to check if the revealed regularities are universal. The results of the project will contribute to realistic modelling of the soil food web structure. The project was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research for 2018-2020. I was a leading investigator in the team of 10 people (part-time).
Related publications:
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/705811
https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12434
http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/1365-2435.13309
A hypothetical scheme of size compartmentalization in soil food webs. Red arrows show three suggested key compartments of fauna consumers and main energy flows within each. All compartments rely on detritus, bacteria and fungi in different proportions. Trophic links between different compartments vary depending on the environmental conditions and numeric abundance of different groups.
EUdaphobase – European soil-biology data warehouse
The EUdaphobase COST Action aims to create the structures and procedures necessary for developing an open Europe-wide soil biodiversity data infrastructure. European authorities and stakeholders urgently need reliable tools for monitoring and evaluating the environmental condition of soils within policy assessment in context of numerous EU directives. The ultimate goal of EUdaphobase is to establish a pan- European soil-biological data and knowledge warehouse, which can be used for understanding, protecting and sustainably managing soils, their biodiversity and functions.
A main goal of the Working Group 3 is to query, map and assess functional biodiversity derived from trait information of species for which occurrence data is available. A main task is to harmonise trait data and create a consensus on nomenclature and units, paying careful attention to what has already been learned by leading experts when establishing their own databases and evaluating trait data. Available thesauri for trait data will be brought together, assessed and where necessary expanded and amended. To map and assess functional biodiversity, a data warehouse must link traits to species, which are linked to field-level biodiversity data. The data-warehouse platform foreseen for the Action is currently developing the software routines to link trait-data to species and to aggregate species occurrence data based on trait information, which can then be used for evaluation and assessment routines. WG3 will evaluate these software modules and produce guidance for further development of software-based biodiversity evaluation and assessment based on trait data. WG3 will work together with WG5 to ensure that the trait data being collated are relevant to the needs of end users. The project is an EU-funded COST action. I am co-chair in the WG3 on traits and the MC substitute for Germany.
European Soil-Biology Data Warehouse for Soil Protection
Evolution of trophic level in animal kingdom
Shared ancestry is typically associated with ecological similarity, with closely related species having similar traits and therefore similar ecological niches. Such similarity results from ‘evolutionary inertia’ and is referred to as phylogenetic signal. Thereby, phylogenetic signals reflect the tendency of phylogenetically related species to share the same ecological traits more often than expected by chance. Often explored in the morphological traits, phylogenetic signal is being rarely tested in more 'functional' traits. In this project we test phylogenetic signal for trophic level across the animal tree of life and patterns of tropical evolution in animal kingdom. The project stems from the smaller-scale initiative on Collembola, that is described below.
Collembola is an evolutionary old lineage of arthropods that shows remarkable morphological and functional diversity in contemporary communities. Different species of Collembola have different position in food webs, ranging from algivores and herbivores to detritivores and fungivores, and even carnivores. Trophic niches of these cryptic arthropods can be assessed with stable isotope analysis of C (reflecting basal resources) and N (reflecting trophic level). However, to predict trophic niches we need to get a mechanistic understanding of factors that shape them. Here we aimed at assessing the contribution of inherent parameters, such as morphological traits in shaping the trophic niches of collembolan species considering that these species are not evolutionary independent. We compiled data on 10 core ecomorphological traits and stable isotope composition for 81 species from temperate ecosystems, that were placed on a phylogenetic tree reconstructed based on 28S RNA and COI genes. All tested traits affected 15N and/or 13C concentrations suggesting that these traits may be trophically adaptive. Phylogenetic regressions showed that both trophic niche and morphological traits are related to phylogeny, but some traits were more evolutionary conserved than others. The best model predicting the trophic positions included both less conserved adaptive traits (traits, related to vertical stratification) and highly conserved adaptive traits (the presence of molar plate). Our study indicated evolutionary adaptations that allowed Collembola species from different branches to exploit specific food resources, and demonstrated that trophic adaptations in Collembola can be both evolutionary conserved and labile.
The project has no explicit funding and is my collaboration with Ting-Wen Chen and Ina Schaefer.
Evolution of trophic level (15N concentration) in Collembola. High trophic levels are marked with red, low in blue. Horizontal scale in million years.
Multidimensional trophic niche approach
The collaborative project aims at investigating the role of multiple trophic traits for species coexistence in soil animal communities. This project is a joint research of the Department of Animal Ecology, JFB Institute of Zoology and Anthropology, University of Göttingen (AG Scheu) and the Institute of Soil Biology, Biology Centre, Czech Academy of Sciences (BC-ÚPB). The two groups complement each other by focusing on different aspects of soil animal communities. AG Scheu focuses on soil food webs using molecular and biochemical techniques. The laboratory team consists of functional ecologists that are primarily interested in trophic interactions and functional community composition of soil food webs, and how these impact ecosystem functioning. BC-ÚPB is well-recognized for the taxonomic expertise on soil animals of a wide range of ecosystems. Combining modern instrumental methods and profound expertise in taxonomy, systematics and morphology of individual species, collaboration between the two groups will further the understanding of the structure and functioning of soil animal communities.
The existing large database on the composition of soil animal communities at successional sites will be related to a set of functional ‘trophic’ traits using data collected recently. The traits will be established based on the AG Scheu’s expertise on state-of-the-art stable isotope and fatty acid analyses coupled with gut enzyme analyses at BC-ÚPB. The following main hypotheses will be tested: (1) trophic niche diversity for a single feeding trait is high in stable systems but low in disturbed habitats; (2) species’ trophic niches vary between habitats, but variations are more pronounced between species than between habitats; (3) the combination of multiple traits can separate niches species more precisely, revealing multidimensional niche partitioning and thus accounting for coexistence in soil animals. For the first time the study will integrate multiple feeding traits of species to explain the assemblage of soil-animal communities and thus is on the cutting-edge of modern soil ecology.
The project was supported by Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) and Czech Academy of Sciences. I co-lead the project with Ting-Wen Chen in the team of 10 people (part-time).
Related publications:
Principal component analysis based on median values of the fifteen trophic niche parameters of Collembola taxonomic groups. Collembola groups are shown with dots and silhouettes; trophic parameters are shown with red vectors.
Functional soil biodiversity in space and time
The functions performed by ecosystems are largely determined by the set of functional characteristics of the organisms that inhabit them. Soil animals affect a variety of ecosystem functions, such as destruction of organic matter, maintenance of soil structure and fertility, and biological control. However, the mechanisms of formation and stability of composition of functional characteristics in communities of soil animals barely studied. The project aims to assess the contribution of processes, determined by environmental factors and biotic interactions, and "neutral" processes of dispersion and random drift in formation of the functional composition of communities of soil animals, as well as assessing sustainability of the functional composition of these communities on different temporal and spatial scales. As a model object, we use springtails, one of the most numerous groups of soil animals that inhabit all types of soil. Springtail communities have high functional diversity, which makes them a good research object for our purposes. The project combines a field survey of four natural habitats in the Moscow region and collection a large body of original and published data on the functional characteristics and composition of collembolan communities.
During the project, we for the first time assess the contribution of deterministic (niche) and neutral processes to assembly of functional diversity of springtail communities on several temporal and spatial scales. We for the first time will analyse interdependence of species and functional diversity of springtail communities and the change of this dependence in space and time. We for the first time will stability of the functional diversity of soil microarthropod communities on several scales of consideration. We for the first time will collect a large dataset on the functional characteristics of springtails of the European part of Russia. We will create an online tool for checking and standardizing data sets on taxonomic composition of communities, which for the first time will allow Russian specialists to compare original data with relevant taxonomic classifications from international databases and international biodiversity standards. The project was supported by Russian Science Foundation. I am leading investigator in the team of 4 people.
Spatial distribution of abundance of main groups of soil animals at four sites studied (FS1, FS2, GM1, GM2, are given in columns). The abundance of all groups was scaled between 0 (minimum value, blue) and 1 (maximum value, red).