Linking species, traits and habitat characteristics of Collembola at European scale

Ecological changes in historically polluted soils: Metal(loid) bioaccumulation in microarthropods and their impact on community structure

“…These results show that reproduction strategies of springtails play a role in the springtail community distribution. Moreover, the very low presence of asexual reproduction, only one species M. krausbaueri, highlights the importance of sexual reproduction in the polluted environment and confirms the results of previous works (Santorufo et al, 2014a(Santorufo et al, , 2014bSalmon et al, 2014). Indeed, the asexual reproduction is a short term response in contrast to sexual reproduction which favours polymorphism and is thus an advantage to colonise an ecosystem disrupted like the polluted soils.…”

“…Indeed, springtail diet is dependent on the nutritional quality of the soil. The breeding patterns might allow a better understanding of the mechanisms of distribution and development of these species (Salmon et al, 2014). This is particularly useful in the case of taxa with substantial functional redundancy like Collembola.…”

Traits of collembolan life-form indicate land use types and soil properties across an European transect

“…Despite some regional efforts toward a continual monitoring in some of the EU member states (e.g., BISQ in The Netherlands, Schouten et al, 1997;Rutgers et al, 2009; BBSK in Germany, Römbke et al, 1997), reference values by which to measure future biodiversity losses at broader scales are still scarce for most groups of soil fauna (Gardi et al, 2009(Gardi et al, , 2013. Moreover, there is an urgent need to identify and evaluate indicators for soil diversity and ecosystem services (Feld et al, 2009Faber et al, 2013), which can be accomplished by using indicators based on a functional approach, using species traits Pey et al, 2014;Salmon et al, 2014). In fact, species traits may reflect the organismal performances in the environment and their effects on the ecosystem processes underlying important services (Díaz and Cabido, 2001;Violle et al, 2007;de Bello et al, 2010), such as the role of litter comminution supporting nutrient cycling in soils.…”

“…In fact, Collembola species present a wide range of eco-morphological and life-history traits (Hopkin, 1997;Parisi et al, 2005), indicating different life-forms related to vertical distribution in soils and dispersal ability . This trait perspective has been shown to be a strong tool in understanding mechanisms underlying Collembola community responses to changes in local abiotic conditions (Makkonen et al, 2011;Bokhorst et al, 2012;Salmon et al, 2014), land use disturbance (Lindberg and Bengtsson, 2005;Ponge et al, 2006), landscape structure and habitat fragmentation (Martins da Silva et al, 2012;Querner et al, 2013;Heiniger et al, 2014).…”

Biotic interactions and trait-based ecosystem functioning in soil

“…As demonstrated in recent ecological research with Collembola (e.g. Makkonen et al, 2011;Martins da Silva et al, 2016;Salmon and Ponge, 2012;Salmon et al, 2014;Santorufo et al, 2015), the study of functional traits distribution allows to identify the response of the community to environmental changes (e.g. land use, soil properties, temperature).…”