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Very few principles have been unraveled that explain the relationship between soil properties and soil biota across large spatial scales and different land-use types. Here, we seek these general relationships using data from 52 differently managed grassland and forest soils in three study regions spanning a latitudinal gradient in Germany. We hypothesize that, after extraction of variation that is explained by location and land-use type, soil properties still explain significant proportions of variation in the abundance and diversity of soil biota. If the relationships between predictors and soil organisms were analyzed individually for each predictor group, soil properties explained the highest amount of variation in soil biota abundance and diversity, followed by land-use type and sampling location. After extraction of variation that originated from location or land-use, abiotic soil properties explained significant amounts of variation in fungal, meso- and macrofauna, but not in yeast or bacterial biomass or diversity. Nitrate or nitrogen concentration and fungal biomass were positively related, but nitrate concentration was negatively related to the abundances of Collembola and mites and to the myriapod species richness across a range of forest and grassland soils. The species richness of earthworms was positively correlated with clay content of soils independent of sample location and land-use type. Our study indicates that after accounting for heterogeneity resulting from large scale differences among sampling locations and land-use types, soil properties still explain significant proportions of variation in fungal and soil fauna abundance or diversity. However, soil biota was also related to processes that act at larger spatial scales and bacteria or soil yeasts only showed weak relationships to soil properties. We therefore argue that more general relationships between soil properties and soil biota can only be derived from future studies that consider larger spatial scales and different land-use types.

Ecological communities consist of small abundant and large non-abundant species. The energetic equivalence rule is an often-observed pattern that could be explained by equal energy usage among abundant small organisms and non-abundant large organisms. To generate this pattern, metabolism (as an indicator of individual energy use) and abundance have to scale inversely with body mass, and cancel each other out. In contrast, the pattern referred to as biomass equivalence states that the biomass of all species in an area should be constant across the body-mass range. In this study, we investigated forest soil communities with respect to metabolism, abundance, population energy use, and biomass. We focused on four land-use types in three different landscape blocks (Biodiversity Exploratories). The soil samples contained 870 species across 12 phylogenetic groups. Our results indicated positive sublinear metabolic scaling and negative sublinear abundance scaling with species body mass. The relationships varied mainly due to differences among phylogenetic groups or feeding types, and only marginally due to land-use type. However, these scaling relationships were not exactly inverse to each other, resulting in increasing population energy use and biomass with increasing body mass for most combinations of phylogenetic group or feeding type with land-use type. Thus, our results are mostly inconsistent with the classic perception of energetic equivalence, and reject the biomass equivalence hypothesis while documenting a specific and nonrandom pattern of how abundance, energy use, and biomass are distributed across size classes. However, these patterns are consistent with two alternative predictions: the resource-thinning hypothesis, which states that abundance decreases with trophic level, and the allometric degree hypothesis, which states that population energy use should increase with population average body mass, due to correlations with the number of links of consumers and resources. Overall, our results suggest that a synthesis of food web structures with metabolic theory may be most promising for predicting natural patterns of abundance, biomass, and energy use.

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Anthropogenic land use shapes the dynamics and composition of central European forests and changes the quality and availability of resources of the decomposer system. Th ese changes likely alter the structure and functioning of soil animal food webs. Using stable isotope analysis ( 13 C, 15 N) we investigated the trophic position and resource use of soil animal species in each of four forest types (coniferous, young managed beech, old managed beech and unmanaged beech forests) across three regions in Germany. Twenty-eight species of soil invertebrates were analyzed covering three consumer levels and a representative spectrum of feeding types and morphologies. Data on stable isotope signatures of leaf litter, fi ne roots and soil were included to evaluate to which extent signatures of soil animals vary with those of local resources. Soil animal δ 15 N and δ 13 C signatures varied with the respective signatures of leaf litter and fi ne roots. After calibration to leaf litter signatures, soil animal stable isotope signatures of the diff erent beech forests did not diff er signifi cantly. However, thick leaf litter layers, such as those in coniferous forests, were associated with low animal stable isotope signatures presumably due to reduced access of decomposer animals to root-derived resources, suggesting that the decomposer food web is shifted towards leaf litter based energy pathways with the shift aff ecting all consumer levels. Variation in stable isotope signatures of soil animal species with litter quality parameters suggests that nutrition of third level but not fi rst and second level consumers is related to litter quality, potentially due to microorganisms locking up litter resources thereby hampering their propagation to higher trophic levels.

Most European forests are managed by humans. However, the manner and intensity of management vary. While the effect of forest management on above-ground communities has been investigated in detail, effects on the below-ground fauna remain poorly understood. Oribatid mites are abundant microarthropods in forest soil and important decomposers in terrestrial ecosystems. Here, we investigated the effect of four forest types (i.e., managed coniferous forests; 30 and 70 years old managed beech forests; natural beech forests) on the density, diversity and community structure of oribatid mites (Acari). The study was replicated at three regions in Germany: the Swabian Alb, the Hainich and the Schorfheide. To relate changes in oribatid mite community structure to environmental factors, litter mass, pH, C and N content of litter, fine roots and C content of soil were measured. Density of oribatid mites was highest in the coniferous forests and decreased in the order 30 years old, 70 years old, and natural beech forests. Mass of the litter layer and density of oribatid mites were strongly correlated indicating that the litter layer is an important factor regulating oribatid mite densities. Diversity of oribatid mites was little affected by forest type indicating that they harbor similar numbers of niches. Species composition differed between the forest types, suggesting different types of niches. The community structure of oribatid mites differed more strongly between the three regions than between the forest types indicating that regional factors are more important than effects associated with forest type.

The aim of the present study was to identify food sources of bark-living oribatid mites to investigate if trophic niche differentiation contributes to the diversity of bark living Oribatida. We measured the natural variation in stable isotope ratios ((15)N/(14)N, (13)C/(12)C) in oribatid mites from the bark of oak (Quercus robur), beech (Fagus sylvatica), spruce (Picea abies) and pine (Pinus sylvestris) trees and their potential food sources, i.e., the covering vegetation of the bark (bryophytes, lichens, algae, fungi). As a baseline for calibration the stable isotope signatures of the bark of the four tree species were measured and set to zero. Oribatid mite stable isotope ratios spanned over a range of about 13 delta units for (15)N and about 7 delta units for (13)C suggesting that they span over about three trophic levels. Different stable isotope signatures indicate that bark living oribatid mites feed on different food sources, i.e., occupy distinct trophic niches. After calibration stable isotope signatures of respective oribatid mite species of the four tree species were similar indicating close association of oribatid mites with the corticolous cover as food source. Overall, the results support the hypothesis that trophic niche differentiation of bark living oribatid mites contributes to the high diversity of the group.

Frequent convergent evolution in phylogenetically unrelated taxa points to the importance of ecological factors during evolution, whereas convergent evolution in closely related taxa indicates the importance of favourable pre-existing characters (pre-adaptations). We investigated the transitions to arboreal life in oribatid mites (Oribatida, Acari), a group of mostly soil-living arthropods. We evaluated which general force-ecological factors, historical constraints or chance-was dominant in the evolution of arboreal life in oribatid mites. A phylogenetic study of 51 oribatid mite species and four outgroup taxa, using the ribosomal 18S rDNA region, indicates that arboreal life evolved at least 15 times independently. Arboreal oribatid mite species are not randomly distributed in the phylogenetic tree, but are concentrated among strongly sclerotized, sexual and evolutionary younger taxa. They convergently evolved a capitate sensillus, an anemoreceptor that either precludes overstimulation in the exposed bark habitat or functions as a gravity receptor. Sexual reproduction and strong sclerotization were important pre-adaptations for colonizing the bark of trees that facilitated the exploitation of living resources (e.g. lichens) and served as predator defence, respectively. Overall, our results indicate that ecological factors are most important for the observed pattern of convergent evolution of arboreal life in oribatid mites, supporting an adaptationist view of evolution.