The Soil Crust International (SCIN) project was a multidisciplinary attempt to obtain a complete understanding of biocrusts communities across Europe, including among the monitored locations the Tabernas badlands in Spain, the driest habitat in the whole continent. Here we provide an overview in a Mini-Review format of our research about the functional performance of the more relevant biocrust forming organisms involved, looking for similarities and differences in the behavior of these communities in regions with contrasting environmental conditions, allowing a deeper understanding of habitat over biocrusts functioning. New unpublished results linked to SCIN are also included in order to reinforce or clarify some general ideas proposed within the text. The general perspective provided to the data through this unique multi-site comparison, will allow in depth studies of relevant functional traits that can shed some light over the possibility of biocrusts behaving as functional types under some circumstances. Poikilohydry is proposed as an essential driving force involved, at different extents, in all key traits ruling biocrusts ecophysiology.

国际土壤结壳项目（SCIN）是一项多学科尝试，旨在全面了解整个欧洲的生物结壳群落，包括受监测的西班牙塔伯纳斯（Tabernas）荒地，这是整个大陆最干旱的栖息地。在这里，我们以研究的最小审阅形式提供了一个概述，其中涉及所涉及的更相关的形成生物结壳的生物的功能性能，寻找环境条件不同的地区这些社区的行为的相似之处和不同之处，从而可以更深入地了解生境在生物外壳上起作用。还包括与SCIN关联的未发布的新结果，以加强或阐明文本中提出的一些一般性想法。通过这种独特的多站点比较，为数据提供了总体视角，它将允许对相关功能特征进行深入研究，从而可以揭示某些情况下生物结壳表现为功能类型的可能性。拟脂蛋白水是决定生物结皮生态生理学的所有关键特征的不同程度的基本驱动力。