“…Soil microbial and animal communities control key ecosystem processes such as decomposition and primary production and are in turn influenced by the activity of aboveground organisms (Gessner et al., ; Wardle et al., ). Recent studies have highlighted previously underrated effects of soil biota on plants (Andriuzzi, Pulleman, Schmidt, Faber, & Brussaard, ; Babikova et al., ; Blouin et al., ), and functional linkages spanning multiple trophic levels (Howison, Berg, Smit, van Dijk, & Olff, ; Johnson, Staley, McLeod, & Hartley, ; Zhao, Griffin, Wu, & Sun, ). Nonetheless, general rules in how belowground and aboveground communities influence each other remain challenging to identify, even for one of the most widespread and conspicuous components of terrestrial ecosystems: aboveground herbivores.…”