Plant roots fuel tropical soil animal communities

Date:
March 7, 2023
Source:
University of Go"ttingen
Summary:
A research team has shed new light on the importance of plant roots
for below-ground life, particularly in the tropics. Millions of
small creatures toiling in a single hectare of soil including
earthworms, springtails, mites, insects, and other arthropods
are crucial for decomposition and soil health. For a long time,
it was believed that leaf litter is the primary resource for
these animals. However, this recent study is the first to provide
proof that resources derived from plant roots drive soil animal
communities in the tropics.


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FULL STORY ==========================================================================
A research team led by the University of Go"ttingen has shed new light
on the importance of plant roots for belowground life, particularly in
the tropics.

Millions of small creatures toiling in a single hectare of soil including earthworms, springtails, mites, insects, and other arthropods are crucial
for decomposition and soil health. For a long time, it was believed that
leaf litter is the primary resource for these animals. However, this
recent study is the first to provide proof that resources derived from
plant roots drive soil animal communities in the tropics. The results
were published in the journalEcology Letters.


==========================================================================
The researchers isolated plots within natural ecosystems and separated the plots from accessing plant roots with a plastic barrier (a technique known
as 'root trenching'). Their study included rainforest, as well as both
rubber and oil palm plantations in Sumatra, Indonesia. As a comparison,
they removed all dead leaves, the main resource of decomposer animals,
from other experimental plots. They found that without living roots,
animal abundance in the rainforest plots decreases by 42 percent and in plantations by 30 percent. By contrast, removing the dead leaves has
almost no effect on the animals in the underlying soil, but decreased
the total animal abundance (in the soil and dead leaves) by 60 percent
in rainforest and rubber plantations due to physical litter removal.

However, the effects of plant litter removal were not observed in oil
palm plantations, where litter is very scarce in any case. The study
also revealed that living roots are especially important for the smaller
soil animals, such as mites and springtails. Interestingly, after adding artificial plastic leaves in oil palm plantations, abundance of some
animal groups -- such as prostigmata -- increased, highlighting that
improving habitat structure, for instance by mulching, can promote soil
food networks and the services they provide.

"The study provides novel perspectives for the management of the resources provided by plant litter in tropical plantations, fostering soil animal biodiversity. This is important to develop sustainable agricultural
landscapes in the tropics," says Professor Stefan Scheu, head of the
Animal Ecology Working Group at the University of Go"ttingen.

"This study's findings are significant not only for the conservation
of tropical soil biodiversity, but also for the development of global
ecosystem models describing carbon cycling in the tropics. We need a
better understanding of the complex ecological systems that support
life on Earth," adds Dr Anton Potapov, Soil Biodiversity and Functions
at German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), Halle-Jena-Leipzig.

* RELATED_TOPICS
o Plants_&_Animals
# Soil_Types # Organic # Agriculture_and_Food #
Ecology_Research
o Earth_&_Climate
# Ecology # Rainforests # Biodiversity # Sustainability
* RELATED_TERMS
o Soil o Soil_life o Agronomy o Hydroponics o Mite o
Soil_science o Vegetation o Plant

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Go"ttingen. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Zheng Zhou, Jing‐Zhong Lu, Jooris Preiser, Rahayu Widyastuti,
Stefan Scheu, Anton Potapov. Plant roots fuel tropical soil animal
communities. Ecology Letters, 2023; DOI: 10.1111/ele.14191 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/03/230307174312.htm

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