Soil animals play important roles in ecosystem functioning and stability, but the environmental controls on their communities are not fully understood. In this study, we compiled a dataset of soil animal communities for which the abundance and body mass of multiple soil animal groups were recorded. The mass-abundance scaling relationships were then used to investigate multiple environmental controls on soil animal community composition. The data reveal latitudinal shifts from high abundances of small soil animals at high latitudes to greater relative abundances of large soil animals at low latitudes. A hierarchical linear mixed effects model was applied to reveal the environmental variables shaping these latitudinal trends. The final hierarchical model identified mean annual temperature, soil pH and soil organic carbon content as key environmental controls explaining global mass-abundance scaling relationships in soil animal communities (R2c = 0.828, Ngroup = 117). Such relationships between soil biota with climate and edaphic conditions have been previously identified for soil microbial, but not soil animal, communities at a global scale. More comprehensive global soil community datasets are needed to better understand the generality of these relationships over a broader range of global ecosystems and soil animal groups.

中文翻译：

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多种环境控制措施解释了土壤动物群落的全球格局。

土壤动物在生态系统的功能和稳定性中起着重要的作用，但是对它们所在社区的环境控制尚未完全了解。在这项研究中，我们汇编了一个土壤动物群落的数据集，其中记录了多个土壤动物群的丰度和体重。然后，使用质荷关系来研究土壤动物群落组成的多种环境控制。数据揭示了纬度从高纬度的小土壤动物的高纬度向低纬度的大土壤动物的相对高纬度转变。应用分层线性混合效应模型来揭示影响这些纬度趋势的环境变量。最终的层次模型确定了年平均气温，土壤的pH值和土壤有机碳含量作为关键的环境控制因素，解释了土壤动物群落中的总体质量丰度比例关系（R2c = 0.828，Ngroup = 117）。先前已经在全球范围内针对土壤微生物群落而非土壤动物群落确定了土壤生物群与气候和土壤条件之间的这种关系。需要更全面的全球土壤群落数据集，以更好地理解更广泛的全球生态系统和土壤动物群之间这些关系的普遍性。