A Belowground Perspective on Dutch Agroecosystems: How Soil Organisms Interact to Support Ecosystem Services

Soil “Ecosystem” Services and Natural Capital: Critical Appraisal of Research on Uncertain Ground

“…Given the appeal that, by then, ecosystem services had for governmental agencies in various countries, even a cursory mention of related buzzwords in one's writing was indeed, and still is, perceived likely to give it the appearance of societal relevance and legitimacy (Cardona, 2012;Hellec et al, 2015). However, in all of these early contributions to the soil science literature, and in those, more recent, that appear to still be inspired by the same mindset (Haygarth and Ritz, 2009;Mulder et al, 2011;Brussaard, 2012;Brussaard et al, 2012;Foudi, 2012;Hedlund and Harris, 2012;Wall, 2012;Pascual et al, 2015), the framework of ecosystem services seems to be little more than a vague context in which to pursue one's traditional pet research topics, related particularly to the "major groups" of soil fauna (Briones, 2014) or to the fate of soil organic matter (e.g., Lal et al, 2013), and, most frequently, focused on single services (Blouin et al, 2013).…”

Biodiversity, Species Interactions and Ecological Networks in a Fragmented World

“…Recent explorations of so-called trivariate webs, in which feeding links are overlaid on mass-abundance plots, in marine , freshwater (Jonsson et al, 2005;Layer et al, 2010;Woodward et al, 2012) and terrestrial (McLaughlin et al, 2010;Mulder et al, 2011) systems have revealed strong size structure. Typically, energy flows from many abundant, small resources to fewer, rarer and larger consumer species, with many webs containing one or a few apex predators but orders of magnitude more than basal species.…”

“…Body size is a key determinant of predator-prey interactions in many food webs (Emmerson and Raffaelli, 2004;Woodward et al, 2005), with large predators typically consuming smaller resources (Layer et al, 2010;McLaughlin et al, 2010), especially in aquatic systems. As a result, trophic height tends to increase with body mass (Jonsson et al, 2005;, although predator-prey body mass ratios may decline (Brose et al, 2006;Jonsson and Ebenman, 1998;Mulder et al, 2011). Since large species are most susceptible to habitat fragmentation due to their perception and use of resources over larger distances (Holt, 1996) and their need for larger home ranges (Haskell et al, 2002), top predators should be especially prone to extinction.…”

Agricultural practices indirectly influence plant productivity and ecosystem services through effects on soil biota

“…An increasing number of studies demonstrate that agricultural practices, such as tillage regime, fertilization, crop rotation, intercropping, and management type have a significant impact on the diversity, activity, and abundance of soil biota (Altieri 1999, Brussaard et al 2007, Postma-Blaauw et al 2010, Mulder et al 2011, de Vries et al 2013). However, until now, the consequences of agriculturally induced shifts in soil communities have rarely been investigated (Corkidi et al 2002, Verbruggen et al 2012, Barber et al 2013.…”