The soil macrofauna, including animals between 1–2 mm and 20–30 mm in size, uses soil differently from the mesofauna, which lives in cavities, or microfauna that inhabits water films. In some ecosystems, the macrofauna accounts for most of the total soil animal biomass and substantially contributes to soil food-web functioning. Additionally, the macrofauna can be among the most diverse groups in the soil environment. A few macrofaunal taxa (e.g. earthworms and termites) are considered to be ecosystem engineers attracting research focus, while studies on most other soil macrofauna remain scattered and uneven. An analysis of 80 publications conducted for this study showed inconsistent definitions of soil macrofauna by specialists. Further, a comparison of taxa listed among the soil macrofauna and mesofauna deduced that researchers allocate soil animals to either group by higher-level taxonomic categories and not by size. The main challenge in soil macrofaunal surveys is the extremely high diversity of species from widely different taxa, which require highly specialised taxonomists to identify them to species level. The abovementioned publication analysis showed that small taxa, mainly insects, are often not surveyed. In addition, animals of the same species at different ontogenetic stages that coinhabit the soil are not analysed separately. This tendency leads to an underestimation of the abundance and biomass of early larval stages. Hence, the soil macrofauna is seldom included in analyses of soil ecosystem functioning and modelling. Synchronised and unified studies across biomes could draw more attention to this size group and increase research focus and output from soil ecologists and other scientists.

土壤大型动物（包括大小在1-2毫米至20-30毫米之间的动物）使用的土壤不同于中型动物（中型动物生活在空腔中，或生活在水膜中的微型动物）。在某些生态系统中，大型动物占土壤动物总生物量的大部分，并极大地促进了土壤食物网的功能。此外，大型动物可能是土壤环境中最多样化的群体之一。一些大型动物类群（例如earth和白蚁）被认为是吸引研究重点的生态系统工程师，而对其他大多数土壤大型动物的研究仍然分散且参差不齐。对本研究进行的80种出版物的分析表明，专家对土壤大型动物的定义不一致。更多，对土壤大型动物群和中型动物群中列出的分类单元的比较得出结论，研究人员将土壤动物按较高级别的分类类别而不是大小进行分配。土壤大型动物调查的主要挑战是来自非常不同的分类单元的物种的极高多样性，这需要高度专业的分类学家才能在物种水平上进行识别。上述出版物分析表明，通常不调查小类群，主要是昆虫。此外，不会单独分析在不同的个体发育阶段共同生活在土壤中的相同物种的动物。这种趋势导致对幼体早期阶段的丰度和生物量的低估。因此，土壤大型动物很少被包括在土壤生态系统功能和模型的分析中。