Soil Fauna Activities in Agricultural Greek Landscapes
103
soil quality/health. Biodiversity protecting directives and international commitments,
e.g., Habitats Directive, Natura 2000, or Convention on Biological Diversity, CITES),
refer to legacy effects across three organism scales (microbes, plants, animals) by not
explicitly mentioning the soil fauna biodiversity [18, 146, 147]. Thus, we need not
only a further refinement of our experimental approaches, more taxonomical efforts
and ecological work on soil biota level, but also “activity proxies” and “response
traits” in addition to abundance and biomass estimates. When it is true that soils
sustain a high diversity, how could the little attention they receive compared to plants
or birds be justified?
Until now we are unable to clearly relate ecosystem functions to ecosystem diversity. Relationships, found in several studies, might not be causal correlations and
hence, much of the diversity present might just be “redundant.” For preserving
plants seed banks have been built in selected parts of the world to keep unique
and valuable plant species. For saving microbial genomes large culture collections
of fungi (including yeasts), bacteria and plasmids exist for commercial value and
for keeping the possibility of “resurrecting” nearly extinct aboveground vertebrate
species, cells, tissues and embryos from frozen stored samples [148–150]. In soils
(Fig. 1) decaying is organized with involvement of a large belowground biodiversity
and for describing their functionality bio-indicators earthworm abundance, nitrogen,
soil condition relationship is estimated and discussed [113]. A re-defined humus
index, further developed from that of Ponge et al. [151], could provide a soil biodiversity, humus forms integrating framework for soils, plants, animals, and economy
integrating landscape models [18]. For providing a re-defined humus index based
integrative soil food web framework inter alia the question whether burrowing,
soil ingesting earthworms are selective feeders or ingest they just accidentally what
they eat should clearly be answered. From protozoa, nematode, collembolan, and
the epigeic single fungal species preferring L. rubellus (Fig. 4) we know that soil
inhabitants feed selectively and related research may open new options in elucidating the level of species-specific selection by grazing and assessing the overall
impacts of gut passage shaping [11, 152, 153]. The earthworm gut passage selects
between survivors and non-survivors and thus have different implications for soil
biodiversity attacks on recalcitrant substrates, crop performance in dependency of
fungi infestations, and finally on model approaches (Fig. 7), which for constructive
mathematical formulations, e.g. should know when seasonal litter fall and nutrients
pulses activate the biology in hot spots or when to what extent horizontal and vertical
transfers of leaf residues on the soil surface and deeper soil layers take place. The
current literature descriptions of the processes at the root-soil interface dominate,
but a subordinated attention find soil fauna effects, termed “zoological weathering” (elements mobilizing), “zoological bonding and retarding” (organic matter and
biology immobilizing), “zoological bioturbation” (soil structure shaping), modulating the breaking down of organic inputs, the integrating of abiotic (climate, soil
texture) and biotic factors (litter quality and biological accessibility), and influence
decomposition across spatial and temporal scales.
The complex nature of soil communities, living in a heterogeneous mosaic of
microsites with different conditions and resource availabilities where abundance and
103
soil quality/health. Biodiversity protecting directives and international commitments,
e.g., Habitats Directive, Natura 2000, or Convention on Biological Diversity, CITES),
refer to legacy effects across three organism scales (microbes, plants, animals) by not
explicitly mentioning the soil fauna biodiversity [18, 146, 147]. Thus, we need not
only a further refinement of our experimental approaches, more taxonomical efforts
and ecological work on soil biota level, but also “activity proxies” and “response
traits” in addition to abundance and biomass estimates. When it is true that soils
sustain a high diversity, how could the little attention they receive compared to plants
or birds be justified?
Until now we are unable to clearly relate ecosystem functions to ecosystem diversity. Relationships, found in several studies, might not be causal correlations and
hence, much of the diversity present might just be “redundant.” For preserving
plants seed banks have been built in selected parts of the world to keep unique
and valuable plant species. For saving microbial genomes large culture collections
of fungi (including yeasts), bacteria and plasmids exist for commercial value and
for keeping the possibility of “resurrecting” nearly extinct aboveground vertebrate
species, cells, tissues and embryos from frozen stored samples [148–150]. In soils
(Fig. 1) decaying is organized with involvement of a large belowground biodiversity
and for describing their functionality bio-indicators earthworm abundance, nitrogen,
soil condition relationship is estimated and discussed [113]. A re-defined humus
index, further developed from that of Ponge et al. [151], could provide a soil biodiversity, humus forms integrating framework for soils, plants, animals, and economy
integrating landscape models [18]. For providing a re-defined humus index based
integrative soil food web framework inter alia the question whether burrowing,
soil ingesting earthworms are selective feeders or ingest they just accidentally what
they eat should clearly be answered. From protozoa, nematode, collembolan, and
the epigeic single fungal species preferring L. rubellus (Fig. 4) we know that soil
inhabitants feed selectively and related research may open new options in elucidating the level of species-specific selection by grazing and assessing the overall
impacts of gut passage shaping [11, 152, 153]. The earthworm gut passage selects
between survivors and non-survivors and thus have different implications for soil
biodiversity attacks on recalcitrant substrates, crop performance in dependency of
fungi infestations, and finally on model approaches (Fig. 7), which for constructive
mathematical formulations, e.g. should know when seasonal litter fall and nutrients
pulses activate the biology in hot spots or when to what extent horizontal and vertical
transfers of leaf residues on the soil surface and deeper soil layers take place. The
current literature descriptions of the processes at the root-soil interface dominate,
but a subordinated attention find soil fauna effects, termed “zoological weathering” (elements mobilizing), “zoological bonding and retarding” (organic matter and
biology immobilizing), “zoological bioturbation” (soil structure shaping), modulating the breaking down of organic inputs, the integrating of abiotic (climate, soil
texture) and biotic factors (litter quality and biological accessibility), and influence
decomposition across spatial and temporal scales.
The complex nature of soil communities, living in a heterogeneous mosaic of
microsites with different conditions and resource availabilities where abundance and