Beyond microbes: Are fauna the next frontier in soil biogeochemical models?

Grandy, A. Stuart; Wieder, William R.; Wickings, Kyle; Kyker-Snowman, Emily

doi:10.1016/j.soilbio.2016.08.008

Title: Beyond microbes: Are fauna the next frontier in soil biogeochemical models?

Journal Article · Thu Aug 25 00:00:00 EDT 2016 · Soil Biology and Biochemistry

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soilbio.2016.08.008· OSTI ID:1534315

Grandy, A. Stuart ^[1]; Wieder, William R. ^[2]; Wickings, Kyle ^[3]; Kyker-Snowman, Emily ^[1]

Univ. of New Hampshire, Durham, NH (United States)
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, CO (United States); Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States)
Cornell AgriTech, Geneva, NY (United States). New York State Agricultural Experiment Station

The explicit representation of microbial communities in soil biogeochemical models is improving their projections, promoting new interdisciplinary research, and stimulating novel theoretical developments. However, microbes are the foundation of complicated soil food webs, with highly intricate and non-linear interactions among trophic groups regulating soil biogeochemical cycles. This food web includes fauna, which influence litter decomposition and the structure and activity of the microbial community. Given the early success of microbial-explicit models, should we also consider explicitly representing faunal activity and physiology in soil biogeochemistry models? Herein we explore this question, arguing that the direct effects of fauna on litter decomposition are stronger than on soil organic matter dynamics, and that fauna can have strong indirect effects on soil biogeochemical cycles by influencing microbial population dynamics, but the direction and magnitude of these effects remains too unpredictable for models used to predict global biogeochemical patterns. Given glaring gaps in our understanding of fauna-microbe interactions and how these might play out along climatic and land use gradients, we believe it remains early to explicitly represent fauna in these global-scale models. However, their incorporation into models used for conceptual exploration of food-web interactions or into ecosystem-scale models using site-specific data could provide rich theoretical breakthroughs and provide a starting point for improving model projections across scales.

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Research Organization:: Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC); USDA

Grant/Contract Number:: SC0014374

OSTI ID:: 1534315

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1430580

Journal Information:: Soil Biology and Biochemistry, Vol. 102, Issue C; ISSN 0038-0717

Publisher:: ElsevierCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 78 works

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Title: Beyond microbes: Are fauna the next frontier in soil biogeochemical models?

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