Oil palm plantations are expanding rapidly throughout Southeast Asia due to increasing global food demand, thereby putting greater pressure on local ecosystems. These plantations usually replace rainforests, resulting in major losses of soil structure and fertility, and belowground biodiversity. However, despite causing soil degradation, oil palms may provide a novel microhabitat for soil biota in suspended soil that accumulates in the axils of cut palm fronds attached to the trunks of these trees. We examined soil communities belowground and in frond axils in a 16‐year‐old oil palm plantation in Sumatra, Indonesia. Community metabolism of small arthropods, nematodes, and testate amoebae (protists) per gram of soil was much higher in axils (suspended soil) than in belowground soil, and accounted for approximately 28% of total soil fauna metabolism at the plantation scale (considering the top 5 cm of soil). Preserving these aboveground microhabitats of suspended soil as hotspots of biological activity during plantation management may therefore partly offset the detrimental impacts of oil palm plantations on soil‐borne processes and biodiversity.

中文翻译：

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地上土壤支持油棕人工林中的高水平生物活性

由于全球粮食需求的增加，油棕种植园正在整个东南亚迅速扩张，从而给当地生态系统带来了更大的压力。这些人工林通常替代雨林，导致土壤结构和肥力以及地下生物多样性的重大损失。然而，尽管造成土壤退化，油棕可能为悬浮土壤中的生物群落提供了一种新颖的微生境，这些微生物聚集在附着在这些树的树干上的切成棕榈的叶腋中。我们在印度尼西亚苏门答腊一个16岁的油棕种植园中研究了地下和叶腋中的土壤群落。每克土壤中的节肢动物，线虫和睾丸变形虫（原生生物）的社区代谢要比地下土壤的每亩土壤高得多，在人工林规模上（考虑到土壤的前5厘米），约占土壤动物总代谢的28％。因此，在人工林管理期间将这些悬空的土壤微生境保存为生物活动的热点，可能会部分抵消油棕人工林对土壤传播过程和生物多样性的有害影响。