Soil health is the foundation for the maintenance of ecosystem stability and multifunctionality. Considering biodiversity loss as a global concern, it is important to investigate to what level soil biodiversity is responding to land use intensifications and altering ecosystem functions.
In a study published in Soil Biology and Biochemistry, researchers from Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) demonstrated interactive effects of soil multidiversity and plant diversity on the soil multidiversity-ecosystem multifunctionality (MEF) relationships. They showed that multitrophic soil organisms of different body sizes are a good predictor of soil biodiversity and are essential to maintain ecosystem multifunctionality in tropical land use systems.
The researchers performed an extensive study in rubber plantations with different understory plant diversity levels，including monoculture (MRP), high (RHD) and low (RLD) diversity of other plant species. They assessed soil multidiversity including bacteria, fungi, nematodes (5 feeding types), and arthropods (thripidae, poduridae, and others), 11 variables for ecosystem functions, and ecological network stability (reflected by co-occurrence network patterns) in rubber plantations differing in land-use intensity.
They found that soil multidiversity differed distinctly in response to different rubber plantations. Compared to rubber monoculture, the multidiversity, multifunctionality, and soil network stability significantly improved in RHD. High plant diversity improved multidiversity and multifunctionality
More specifically, they found that the relationship between soil multidiversity and multifunctionality was seasonally dependent on the soil attributes and the body size of soil organisms. Seasonal difference in multidiversity-multifunctionality relationship depended on body size of soil organisms. Large size soil organisms contributed to multifunctionality significantly in dry season. Rain season facilitated microbial activities and positively affected multidiversity-multifunctionality relationship.
Their data supported the relevance of soil multidiversity in determining the soil health capacity which is essential to the functioning of the ecosystem. Therefore, the researchers proposed considering multidiversity as a bioindicator of soil health to monitor land use driven impacts on the ecosystem functions.
“Our study elucidates that accurate identification of soil health indicators is an important approach to imply remedial management strategies to maintain soil health and MEF relationship in managed ecosystems such as rubber plantations,” said YANG Xiaodong of XTBG.
Contact
YANG Xiaodong Principal Investigator
Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla, Yunnan 666303, China
E-mail: yangxd@xtbg.ac.cn
